,■> -; •. i 



THE COSMIC COMEDY 

OR 

THE VITAL URGE 



BY 

LEONARD STUART 
("h. c. Anglican") 

Author of 'The Great God Pan," "The Eon," "The Suffragettes, 

"The Violinist," "Life's Ideal," etc. Editor "New Century 

Reference Library of World Knowledge," 

"The People's Cyclopedia," etc. 



When Time began, — then, — deathless eons met, 

To good eternal down the ages plighted. 

What? — Though their lives may never be united 
By mortal bonds; while eras rise and set, 

Their pure minds blend in glance of eyes delighted; 
Clean hearts! white souls! they greet — without regret. 

To E. E. M.—Cor Maria— "The Eon." 




ARTletVeRIT^rO 



BOSTON 
RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 



Copyright, 1919, by Charles L. Stuart 



All Rights of Translation, etc., Reserved 



Made in the United States of America 



The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 



iCi.A529371 



^ 



r 



PSYCHE COSMI 

AD 

LUCEM MUNDI 

RB 

ROSA SH ARONI 



* * * 

L.J.S., St.B., S.C. 

A FRIEND IN DEED 
IN TIME OF NEED 



M.H, F H.M., S.S., F.R. 
A.L., G.E.R., F.F., G.Y, 



TO THE ABOVE GOOD COMRADES OF DIFFERENT FAITHS, WHOSE 

HONEST CRITICISM, COMPANIONSHIP, ASSISTANCE AND 

INSPIRATION WROUGHT ITS CONSUMMATION, 

THIS BOOK 

IS CORDIALLY DEDICATED 

WITH THE SINCERE HOPE THAT IT MAY HELP TO ACCOMPLISH 

IN UNIVERSAL MEASURE THE UNITY OF THOUGHT AND 

PURPOSE THAT WELDED OUR FRIENDSHIPS 



New York, New Year, igig 



"This is such an odd and incomprehensible world 
. . . What a complex riddle, a complexity of complexi- 
ties!" 

"All human progress is in a circle ; or, to use a more 
accurate figure, in an ascending spiral curve. While 
we fancy ourselves going straight forward and at- 
taining, at every step, an entirely new position of af- 
fairs, we do actually return to something long ago tried 
and abandoned, but which we now find etherealized, 
refined and perfected to its ideal. The past is but a 
coarse and sensual prophecy of the future." 

"At some brighter period, when the world shall have 
grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth 
will be revealed, in order to establish the whole rela- 
tion between man and woman on a surer ground — of 
mutual happiness." 

"I have always envied the Catholics their faith in 
that sweet sacred Virgin Mother, who stands between 
them and the Deity, intercepting somewhat of his awful 
splendor, but permitting his love to stream upon the 
worshiper more intelligibly to human comprehension 
through the medium of a woman's tenderness." 

— Haiuthorne. 



"To see the best men move in sympathy and harmony 
with the best women, and to see both linked together 
by zeal and service to all ranks of their fellow-creatures, 
this is what my heart desires, this is what American 
men and women owe to the country whose debt to them 
in the past may be recognized, while its claim upon 
them in the future extends far beyond the limits and 
the records with which we have become familiar." 

— Julia Ward Hoiue. 



Quotations 



"For this thy child, a woman earnest-eyed 

Who wears thy gracious favors worthily, 
Pledges her honest faith, her constant pride. 
To live her life as one who holds in trust 
God's gold to give again, who fearless must 
Face the great days to be." 

— Sophie Jeivett. 

"How white then should be the soul of every Ameri- 
can woman. Upon her influence depend largely the 
spiritual forces which shall determine the status and 
progress of our nation." 

— Lydia Hoyt Farmer. 



INSTRUCTIONS 

HOW TO GET THE BEST OUT OF THIS 
BOOK 

Read first the prose version furnished by the Intro- 
duction, the topical headings in italics to each 
verse, and the extracts from the lecture on 
"WISDOM" by LO-CARUS. 

Then read uninterruptedly the narrative rhyme, 
and for quotation purposes, commit to memory 
any verses that take the fancy. Those here enu- 
merated are especially commended to the readers 
attention. 

Verses 

33 35 40 41 43 45-b-c 48 52 59 61 67 78 
79 80 90 91 95 98 99 100 loi 102 103 107 

108 109 no 112 119 128 133 147 149 150 155 156 

166 167 168 169 178 179 182 189 190 194 195 196 

197 198 199 2CX) 205 206 209 210 211 216 217 218 

219 220 221 222 



CONTENTS 



Introductory 



PAGE 

9 



PART I 



The Cosmic Comedy or The Vital Urge 
Canto I Verses i- i8 . . . 



(( 


II 


Inter! 


ude " 


Cantc 


> III 


" 


IV 


a 


V 


<( 


VI 


" 


VII 


(( 


VIII 


" 


IX 


(I 


X 


Postscript *' 



19-4+ 

45-a-b 

46-58 

59-76 45 

77-96 S3 

97-107 61 

108-132 67 

133-169 77 

170-187 . . " 91 

188-218 99 

219-222 Ill 

"Wisdom" by Lo-Carus 113 

Author's Recapitulation 127 

PART II 

War and Peace 129 

I. America to Britain — Chant of Brotherhood . 130 

Militarism — A Threnody 131 

The Vision; Death — Revelation — Faith . , 134 

The Song of Peace 135 

Unity: Life's Ideal: The Basis of Federation 

— Hebrew-Catholic-Protestant 137 

7 



'We are the music makers, 

And we are the dreamers of dreams: 

World-losers and world-forsakers. 
On whom the pale moon gleams: 

Yet we are the movers and shakers 
Of the world forever, it seems. 

With wonderful deathless ditties 
We build up the world's great cities. 
And out of a fabulous story 
We fashion an empire's glory: 

And overthrow them with prophesying 
To the old of the new world's worth; 

For each age is a dream that is dying. 
Or one that is coming to birth." 

A. O'Shaughnessy. 



THE COSMIC COMEDY 

OR 

THE VITAL URGE 

INTRODUCTORY 

In press dispatches of December, iQiS, the world 
read that: "The ex-Kaiser is seen at the window of 
the bedroom which he occupies in Amerongen 
Castle, Holland, writing furiously all the day long. 
He fills sheet after sheet of foolscap, which he vio- 
lently tosses aside in his haste to get to the next. 
What is he writingf^ 

In the following pages, the author considers him- 
self impersonally privileged to become the medium 
in America for the transmission of the ex-ruler's 
message, written for the benefit of his sons and their 
progeny. He attempts to identify himself with each 
character that appears and wading into the shallow 
Hohenzollern temperament he dissects and analyzes 
the unfortunate mentality's reflections upon its past 
life. The Kaiser comes under the influence of the 
spirits of five of Prussia's notorious apostles: — Bis- 
marck, the apostle of ambition and imperial expan- 
sion; Treitschke, the apostle of Pangermanism, eco- 
nomic and military; Nietzsche, the anti-Christ 
apostle of the ruthless oversoul or superman ; Miin- 
sterberg, apostle of German "kultur" at Harvard 
University (who to his honestly expressed astonish- 
ment found superior civilization in the United 
States), and Luther, the greatest German apostle, 



lo The Cosmic Comedy 

who explains how his reformation aims were mis- 
understood and overshot the mark. 

The modern X-Quantity is made to realize that 
the brutality inherent and sporadic In the Prussian 
temperament arises from a lack of mental hygiene, 
to the racial absence of innate respect for woman- 
hood, young and old, which creates the hidden, inner 
motherhood resentment of the species against the 
male and reflects in the progeny. He — the Kaiser — 
is the typical example of this reflected resentment, 
long notorious for his lack of parental respect and 
his unfilial treatment of his mother, the former 
Crown Princess Elizabeth of England and Empress 
of Germany, the first child of Queen Victoria; 
against which her brother the Prince of Wales, later 
King Edward VII, had to protest and interfere, to 
bring his conceited nephew temporarily to his senses. 

In the light of subsequent events, when he com- 
pares the national vaunted German "kultur" with 
the rising values of Latin, British and American 
civilization, he further recognizes that evolution in 
racial regeneration rises and falls in nations, accord- 
ing to the respect and reverence accorded to the 
mother-mind of womanhood by MAN, for the re- 
production of the species. Luther gives him a paral- 
lel to German ''kultur" and its products as ancient 
as the Moloch-Minotaur period of Minoan or 
Cretan *'kultur," while he finds that the "Yellow 
Peril" against which he warned the Western World 
is his own "yellow streak of Prusslanism" traced 
back through Bismarckian aggression and the Teu- 
tonic order of robber chieftains of the Dark Ages 
to Attlla and Genseric, the Infamous leaders of the 
Hun hordes who devastated Europe and northern 
Africa in the third and fourth centuries A. D. 
Those descendants of the mongrel tribes of Mon- 
gols of northern Asia who Invaded the Chinese Em- 



Or the Vital Urge ii 

pire In the second century B. C. and after various 
migrations entered Europe and settled in the terri- 
tory since called Germany. 

''A man of firm will can mold the world to his 
thought," wrote Goethe, but ex-Kaiser William II 
did not realize that Goethe meant a man of ''good- 
will" endued with "righteous thought," hence 
through his evil pride arose his "evil will," his "evil 
thought" and all the horrors and ruin his "unmoral 
will" brought upon the world with its holocaust of 
millions of human victims. 

Psychopath^/ically weakening to moral mental de- 
pression, the ex-Kaiser realizes that he has been the 
"insane despoiler of modern civilization, the ruler 
of a nation taught with the mother s milk that 
human right must yield to brutal might," as that In- 
controvertible biological truth was so well synthe- 
sized by the eloquent Japanese Viscount Ishil when 
addressing the United States Senate 30 August, 
191 7. He admits the inferiority of degenerate Ger- 
manism which, with its domineering pride and evil 
arrogance, its brutalit}^ and frightfulness, came to 
look upon its particular brand of Christianity as the 
most advanced type of "kultur" to be Imposed, as 
even Miinsterberg advocated, by force upon the 
earth, notwithstanding the inevitable failures that 
history reveals of every similar attempt, religious 
or political. And, in his mother's faith, in the virile 
eclecticism of the Anglican-Episcopal Church, that 
by tradition, history, precept and example, regards 
itself as occupying a mediatory position for promot- 
ing the cause of unity among all religious bodies, the 
ex-Kaiser acknowledges the broad-minded blend of 
Hebraic Catholicism, of Italo-French-American and 
British-Hindu-Japanese thought and will, which, 
with the splendid unification work of the new 
World-Mother — the Red Cross Society — is federat- 



12 The Cosmic Comedy 

ing the men and women of the World in the Broth- 
erhood and Sisterhood of Humanity. 

Repentant, he implores forgiveness for the sins 
and crimes of his evil pride. Confined within the 
limits of that reverent upright, temperate, manly 
regard which appeals to all well-balanced thought 
when illumed with the exalted sentiment which 
caused Homer, whenever he had occasion to use 
the title, to prefix the adjective "revered" to the 
word 

"mother," 

he finally turns greater light on "the shining figure 
of the Truth Supreme which can ensure lasting 

PEACE." 

Emphasizing the vital principle of creation and 
existence — the influence of the spirit of good in the 
father on the mother-mind for the purification of 
daily life and consequent unity of universal thought^ 
— in its praise of modern womanhood, in its lesson 
of reverence for motherhood, and the education and 
training of girlhood and boyhood in the right prin- 
ciples of self-knowledge, self-respect and self-con- 
trol, for world service, "The Cosmic Comedy or 
The Vital Urge" has a special viewpoint for all 
women and should be of vital interest to the entire 
human race. 



"Si ignoscitis, gaudebo; si succensetis, feram; jacio 
en aleara; libruraque scribo, seu presentibus seu posteris 
legendum, nihil interest; expectet ille suum lectorem per 
annos centum; si Deus ipse per annorum sena milia 
contemplatorem praestolatus est." 

"If you pardon me, I rejoice; if you reproach me, I 
can endure it. The die is thrown; I write a book to 



Or the Vital Urge 13 

be read; whether by the present or future ages, it mat- 
ters not. It can wait for a reader a century, if God him- 
self waited six thousand years for an observer of his 
works." Joannis Kepleri — "Harmonices Mundi." 



AUTHOR'S NOTE 

The author wishes to emphasize the fact 
that therfe is not a single condition, statement 
or argument advanced throughout this book, 
which cannot be substantiated by quotations 
from acknowledged and reliable authorities 
of high standing. Notes, however, were sup- 
pressed, for, while they were of particular in- 
terest, they ran to more than double the length 
of the "Comedy." Should a call for further 
information arise from criticism — or inquiry 
— the notes will form the basis of a new book. 

L.S. 



CANTO I 

And a voice that was thick 
From a soul that seemed sick 
Came back from the Barrier, 
GO! 

For the secrets hidden 

Are all forbidden 

Till God means man to know. 

—E. H. Wilson. 



THE COSMIC COMEDY 

OR 

THE VITAL URGE 

CANTO I 

Amerongen Castle, Hollandj 

December, igi8. 

I 
The Kaiser writes to his sons and confesses to his 
early spurning of mother love. 

Oh sons ! Hell's blight is on the man 

Who spurns the mother love divine 
In God's revealed, evolving plan: 

My eyes are bleared with bitter brine; 
Too short is life's redeeming span, 

For sons ! the curse of Cain is mine. 
2 

He tells of having had a prophetic nightmare or 
**couchmare," (Fr. "cauchemare." ) 

A couchmare came on me this night; 

My spirit left the mortal clod : 
In helpless and resistless flight 

Up, starward through the skies I trod 
The highw^ay leading unto Light 

And there my naked soul saw God. 
17 



1 8 The Cosmic Comedy 

3 
After watching the Great Bear (representing his 
bugbear Russia) and other stars. 

Last eve I laid and watched the stars 

And turned from where the Greater Bear, 

Polaris stalking, ever mars 

My sight; the Pleiads — sisters fair — 

And Aldebaran, through window bars, 
Like hot tears gleamed in crystal air. 

4 ^ 
He sees the Cross in Orion's constellation. 

When eastward low, a cross afar, 

Recumbent, formed within my ken; — 

R^d Betelgeux, the Rigel star, 

Orion's belt: "the Three Wise Men, 

Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar, 

For Christmas come," I said, and then 

5 
He apostrophizes his "Gott." 

I sent a fervent, bold appeal 

In strident prayer unto our God: — 
"O Lord of Might! Thyself reveal! 

Confer on me Thy gracious nod! 
Didst THOU not place on ME THY seal 

To rule the world with iron rod? 
6 

He boasts typically of German "Kultur" of might 
and right divine. 

Set on MY throne by might divine. 

To preach the gospel of THY Son: 
To spread the truth of light divine 

The Kultur, Germany has won; 
Did I not reign by right divine? 

Say! — Was I not your chosen one? 



Or the Vital Urge 19 

7 
Braffs of the German Army, the ''Deutschland 
iiber alles'' host. 

To fill our foes with wild alarms, 

The "Deutschland iiber alles" host, 
In war's bright panoply and charms. 

Is still our special pride and boast: 
With victory endue our arms! 

We do not mind how great the cost! 
8 

He reviles and "strafes'' his British cousins. 

Those British who our efforts choke, 

Who foil our naval aims in scorn; 
O strafe and place them 'neath my yoke, 

I — of an English princess born — 
Since they My anger thus provoke; 

Else all our schemes will be forsworn. 

9 

Who foil his naval and expansion plans. 

For we prepared with foresight keen, 

And watched and waited for '*The Day"; 
On our side then you must be seen. 

Or, shall we hear their Scotchmen say, 
"The well-laid plans of mice — when mean, — 

As evermore have gone astray?" 
10 

German "Kultur' and the envy of his foes. 

Our foes encompass us around: 

They envy us our wealth and might; 

When *'Kultur" should on earth abound. 
When we alone know what is right : 

Say, on our side YOU still are found 

So that "mein Deutschland" wins this fight! 



20 The Cosmic Comedy 

II 
He gets bitter at God's silence. 

Winds croaking with a laugh sweep by ; 

Stars blink and wink sardonic glee; 
The moon's face with a sly and dry, 

Wry smile seems but to grin at me: 
No sign is there, no swift reply, 

Do I no favor find with THEE? 

12 
The Kaiser sees Christ upon Orion's Cross and 
grows reverent. 

This said, I flung me on my bed 

And gazed long in the starry space; 

The Three Wise Men — upright — o'erhead, 
Orion's cross had moved apace, 

And sons! THE CHRIST was there outspread, 
I looked up into Jesu's face. 



13 
Unlike Constantine the Great. 

Not thus the greater Constantine 
Above the Milvian bridge and coast, 

Saw high in Heaven the Cross divine 
And humbly made his pious boast. 

*'Lead on! I conquer in this sign! 
To triumph o'er the pagan host!" 



Or the Vital Urge 21 

Jesus look of sad reproof. 

In sad reproof a grieving glance 

With pity mingled, pierced me through; 

The look sank deep, as when the lance 
Arterial blood and water drew; 

I viewed the sacrifice askance, 

Abased and humbled, for there grew, 

The blood of the Kaiser s victims. 

And poured from Him a living flood ; 

His wounded heart gushed crimson streams; 
Transfixed, I knew it was the blood 

Of victims: God! I heard the screams, — 
As petrified, erect, I stood, — 

From Belgium, France, — Louvain and Rheims. 
16 

The Kaiser s doom foretold. 

Slow, booming low, wild Belgian bells 
Tolled through the gloom afar and near; 

Sad Flemish chimes wove mystic spells 
With looming dirge upon my ear; 

Doomed! Damned! Damned! Doomed! so rang 
their knells. 
Shrink! shudder! in corroding fear! 

17 _ 

The spirits of the Lusitanian victims haunt him. 

Around, about, before me went 

Sweet female forms with mournful eyes ; 

Sad baby faces o'er me bent 

With drowning and with stifled cries: 

The Lusitanian victims sent 

To death 'neath smiling Maytime skies. 



22 The Cosmic Comedy 

i8 
He even hears Hell appealing to avenge Edith 
Cavell. 

While up my flesh crept horror dire, 

For welling even up from Hell, 
In waves that higher rose and higher, 

Swept up a litanizing yell, 
Unwav'ring in its fierce desire, 

Avenge, O God! Edith Cavell! 

Avenge, O God! Edith Cavell! (ad libitum) 

AVENGE! 

O GOD! 

EDITH 

CAVELL! 



CANTO II 

''With him will we speak mouth to mouth even 
transparently and not in dark speeches." 

"Ho-Bab! We will do thee goodl" 



CANTO II 

19 

The Kaiser swoons and his naked soul flies star- 
ward to meet God. 

O'erwhelmed I swooned; my fainting soul 
Left mortal clay and through the night 

Rushed upward where the planets roll: 
A ghastly crowd aligned my flight 

To reach the everlasting goal, 

The throne of God's eternal light. 

20 
// curdles as it meets on the Milky or Great 
White Whey, Bismarck, Nietzsche, Treitschke and 
Miinsterberg. 

When on — that brute of power, vain 
Bismarck, of iron blood bewitched, 

Nietzsche, the anti-Christ insane, 

Treitschke, with nasal squeak, high-pitched, 

Miinsterberg, — urged in flame of pain. 
In scorn of hell with shame enriched. 

21 
Who hiss some opinion of him. 

Their wraiths came hissing in my ear, 

"Incompetent! insensate one! 
This infamy you'll never clear. 

The ill your ignorance has done; 
By all the foul work that you rear. 

No place is won within the sun." 
25 



26 The Cosmic Comedy 

22 
Bismarck, howling, cuffs his spiritual ear, while 
recalling his youthful insolence. 

Loud Bismarck howled, ''Impertinence 

Since youth," your gibe '*Ca-ve! adsum!" 
Showed even then, through impudence 

The fall to which your pride would come; 
We then foretold your insolence, 

With scorn would make the whole world hum. 
23 

Bismarck sums the Kaiser up. 

You spurned the love of motherhood — 

Your life became a tangled skein, 
With hate of social brotherhood, 

With pride, with false ambition, vain ; 
You acted as no other would, 

And now you bear the stain of Cain. 
24 

The Kaiser s ignorance, arrogance and malevo- 
lence. 

Why should you show such ignorance? 

In chivalry your youth was trained: 
But steeped in pride and insolence, 

From breeding true, you ever strained: 
Such stupid, crass malevolence 

In your low mind has always reigned. 
25 

Treitschke, squeakifig, scorns his arrogance. 

High Treitschke squeaked, "The mental twist 
Showed that his brain was never right; 

His fool and arrogant 'mailed fist'; 
His prate of 'shining armor bright'; 

How . . . 'mi-les gloriosus!' . . . trist, 
To place all Germans in this light." 



Or the Vital Urge 27 

26 
Mocks the Kaiser s megalomania. 

His pain-drawn face, his restless eye, 

The studied attitudes he chose, 
Were crazy; though for ease he'd try, 

He never could acquire that pose 
Which living true, w-ith purpose high. 

Yields wisdom's look of calm repose. 
27 

Tells him rightj not mighty should be his aim. 

Had he but sensed that right, not might. 

Has greater force than fire and sword; 
That evil he alone should fight 

And o'er the right keep watch and ward, 
He might have lived in glorious light 

The economic World-Peace-Lord. 
28 

Next — Miinsterberg began — and scored his foiled 
show-off before Nancy. 

Of him can it be true what's said? 

All haughty, with conceited glance he 
Watched, nursing there, with pride o'erlaid, 

A foppish, fool imperial fancy. 
In coxcomb pomp of white arrayed. 

To show off in — uncaptured — Nancy. 
29 

Sane opinion ranks hijn as the King consummate 
silly ass. 

Ye Gods ! what kink is it that binds 
His thought in such a muddled pass? 

When ridicule so swift unwinds 
The sane opinion of the mass. 

To rank him in all wholesome minds, 
The King consummate silly ass. 



28 The Cosmic Comedy 

30 
The Kaiser and the Holy Grail. 

On Zion's Mount, brave British bands 

Again his stupid efforts stale; 
A monstrance, loot from Turkish hands, 

He holds, and thinks he's gained "The Grail"; 
That silly trick against him stands. 

Egregious boob, of no avail. 

31 
The Prussian slob, snob, and S, O. B. 

In sheer contempt of him unfurled. 

He's styled the Hohenzollern snob; 
In foul disgust, the outer world 

Now calls each Prussian hog — a slob ; 
Against them everywhere is hurled 

Opprobrious, the term of S. O. B. 

"And what may be S. O. B.?" I — der Kaiser 
asked furiously sneering; then Miinsterberg turn- 
ing on me personally and thundering, so that I 
shuddering shrank, replied, "Sons of b-rrutes! you 
snob, brutes from the male, not the female side, for 
you and your kind have made women the subjective 
— or resentful — vessels that some are to produce 
such inhuman beasts." 

32 

The Skunk of Germany, — the rotten Kaiser. 

To lowest depths our nation sunk. 

How ill-considered each adviser; 
With world-ambition graspings drunk, 

Had they just been one whit the wiser. 
You'd not be ranked now as "The Skunk 

Of Germany, — the rotten Kaiser!" 



Or the Vital Urge 29 

Degraded as a Knight of the Garter. 

Spurned from King Arthur's noble class 

Of Knights, who world-advance have sought; 

Kickt out, unworthy of the pass 
To chivalry, with uplift fraught; 

You lost the goodwill of the mass, 
When "evil followed evil thought." 

34 
The fierce white light that beats upon a throne. 

When Belgium fair was overthrown, 

The wrongs you wrought to seek your goal, 

Repentance never will condone: 

Now, clouds of darkness backward roll; 

The fierce white light beats on the throne 
Where shrinks your shivering, shriveled soul. 

35 
Plato's dictum: The nation is the man writ large, 
or '^Qualis rex, talis grex — Like king, like peopled 

Who follow peace and wisdom scan. 
For them will joy and blessings bloom; 

Who follow false gods, then the ban 
Of hell is evermore their doom; 

Writ large, the nation is the man, 
As rulers are, the people loom. 

36 

Machiavel Be^hmann^Hollw egg's ''Scrap of 
Paper." 

Your Prussian clique will dwell in Hell 

As violated Belgium's raper; 
Your Bethmann-Hollweg Machiavel, 

To him Old Eblis holds no taper; 
To call our treaty, — vile to tell, — 

Our Belgian pledge, — "A scrap of paper." 



30 The Cosmic Comedy 

37 
The turpitude of Tirpitz and the vermin pirate 
water-rats. 

The turpitude of Tirpitz, while 

His vermin pirate water rats, 
On submarine campaigning vile, 

Like crafty, crouching, creeping cats, 
Went forth, — beamed with the greasy smile 

Of porcine-fed and beer-blown "vats." 

The cowardly Prussian Junker. 

With lust of might and power drunker 
Than could a speedy road-hog handle, 

So arrogant your Prussian Junker, 
No one to him can hold a candle, 

And yet at death, a squealing funker. 
To all brave men a mocking scandal. 

39 
The Prussian yellow mad dog streak. 

Your mad dog strain, the world will boot: 

The force of might, can you command it? 
When Belgian lands you ravage, loot. 

Your yellow streak none understand it; 
When right you trample underfoot; 

You rank — the rank unkultured bandit! 
40 

America the Melting Pot of the races of the 
World. 

America the melting pot 

Of every race from every clime, 
See how that nation's brave sons, hot. 

Fused in the crucible of time, 
Flock eager to avenge the blot 

Of fiendish, autocratic crime. 



Or the Vital Urge 31 

41 
German servile subservience versus willing serv- 
ice, 

{Then "Quiddingly" sarcastic: — ) 
''Caligula!" stand in the light, 

And see how by the world you're hated ; 
Servile subservience to might 

Your German "kultur" inculcated, 
While willing service for the right, 

The higher nations cultivated. 
42 

The women-rapers and baby-killers. 

'Tis great — the race your caste has run, 
Of human life the heedless spillers; 

Deep, blood-red glows your setting sun, 
You demon, brutal horror-thrillers! 

Down history, the stigma won 
Of woman-rapers ! baby killers ! 

, 43 ^ 

Miinsterberg invokes GOD'S Light upon the 
hell-begotten pride of the War Lords. 

Good GOD! upon such War-Lords roll, 

In might and majesty unfurled, 
So Wisdom may their wills control. 

Their hell-born pride be hellward hurled, 
THY LIGHT which should light every soul 

That passes through the mortal world. 

44 

Nietzsche is requested to orate. 

Here, Nietzsche! you of gifted word. 

Whose mind has cleared beyond the veil. 

The thought chaotic, nations stirred. 
Take up the burden of our tale; 

From you, let wholesome Truth be heard. 
For great is Truth and will prevail. 



INTERLUDE 

At this point, Miinsterberg vanished suddenly; 
Nietzsche and Treitschke placed themselves on 
either side of me, Bismarck followed uncomfort- 
ably close in the rear, and this interlude began: 



45 
The Procession on the Milky or "Great White 
Wheyr 

Then while but three kept pace with me 

Up through the studded ''Great White Whey" 
Of struggling shades who strive to free 

The taint of sin from mortal clay, 
As we sped onward to my goal, 

His philosophic wraith ashake 
With grief that quivered nerve and soul, 

"Thus ZARATHUSTRA'S author spake":— 

(Quoting enigmatically from unknown authors.) 

TRUTH never dies, 

"TRUTH answers not; it does not take offense; 

But with a mighty silence bides its time: 
As some great cliff that braves the elements 

And lifts through all the storms its head sublime, 
So TRUTH, unmoved, its puny foes defies. 
But never dies." 

Deep in the spring Pierian lies 

The source of Truth that should convert you — 
"To wise and watchful waiting rise, 

When Vanity vaunts Vice as Virtue." 

(Then addressing me — der Kaiser — he began: 
"Now listen attentively and with your conceited 
limited intelligence, try to grasp the following dis- 
course on 'The Heliocentric Universe' and EU- 
GEONISM— The Art of Right Living and Well- 
Being, the Creed of the Well-Born and the Well- 
Bred.' " 

35 



CANTO III 

"Metaphysics is the highest form of intellectual 
enjoyment." — Aristotle. 

The mathematical method in metaphysics by 
which we arrive at the conclusion that the inner na- 
ture of celestial things is analogous to our own inner 
nature is formulated with marvelous simplicity and 
lucidity by Professor W. K. Clifford, who revived 
the theory of multiple connected spaces or "the 
many mansions" of Scripture. The formula reads: 

'As the physical configuration of your mental 
image of the object 

Is to the physical configuration of the object 

So is your perception of the complex object of 
your feelings 

To the — 'thing-in-itself— '." 

"If as Plato taught, and nature science takes for 
granted, our universe is a geometrized or geometriz- 
able affair, then one of the many geometrical the- 
ories may be objectively valid in it. In the complex 
world of thought, in the w^orld of pure mathesis, 
all of them are valid. There they coexist and in- 
terlace among themselves and others, as differing 
strains of a hypercosmic harmony." N. W. 



CANTO III 

46 

Nietzsche rates the Kaiser s Cosmic status. 

You star-dust speck within the whole 

Predestinated final aim! 
Infinitesimal thy goal, 

Mere molecule! atomic flame! 
Electron of that Cosmic Soul! 

Whom we the One Almighty name! 

(I — der Kaiser — glowered indignantly at the 
familiar style of address, but Nietzsche calmly pro- 
ceeded:) 

47 
GOD or GOOD the love of MIND DIVINE 
the Cosmic TRUTH. 

Learn that the primal cause is God! 

The Cosmic Truth is Mind Divine! 
'Tis God — or Good — that rules the sod, 

And forthwith Nature's glories shine: 
Earth, matter, dust, — the mortal clod — , 

God's spirit can alone refine. 

48 

Earth's Creation. 

Without beginning was your world 
And without end ; but when in space 

From seething Chaos, stars were hurled 
To each its own appointed place; 

With time, law, order, then unfurled, 
That pilule earth of yours keeps pace. 
39 



40 The Cosmic Comedy 

49 
HEAVEN— the Cosmic Hearth the central 
Zodiac core of the Heliocentric Universe. 

Space — one vast circling sphere — enfolds 

Rotating solar system spheres 
Ringed round the Zodiac core which holds 

Heav'n's cosmic hearth, whence flow the years 
Of Time, the scientist beholds 

The heliocentric fabric wears. 
50 

Outside surrounding all is HELL. 

Outside is Hell where thoughts create 

Subjectively, the raging storm; 
There pride, lust, malice, envy, hate, 

Earth's drear disasters, warfare, form; 
Till good, again controlling fate, 

Bids peace resume the primal norm. 

51 
Perpetual motion the electronizing principle of 
life. 

The principle of life and notion 

That knoweth neither time nor end, 
Is energy, perpetual motion. 

Which vital urge and power lend 
To atmosphere, mind, earth and ocean, 

For their electronizing blend. 
52 

Star-dust birth and the radium soul of Eternal 
Life. 

Your earth both formless was and void, 

But in it worked eternal life; 
The radium soul of good, alloyed 

With dross of earthly matter, rife; 
Ormazd, the good, mind-spirit buoyed, 

To purify the baser strife. 



Or the Vital Urge 41 

53 _ 

The vicious scales of lustful sin. 

For Ahriman the devil flings 

In matter the "do-evil" call 
Of lust putrescent, which but springs 

And stings from sloth and thoughts that gall 
The flesh v^ith vile imaginings, 

And all its better strivings pall. 

54 
Carnal lust the serpent that tempted Eve, 

Thus Moses told of Adam's fall. 

When lust — the serpent — tempted Eve; 

And both infect, begetting all 

The deadly sins which but conceive 

The ills that life with misery pall, 
In self-control, would not believe. 

55 
Dante, Milton and Goethe's views. 

So Dante sang of Heaven and Hell; 

Blind Milton too, each hyper realm; 
While Goethe told how manhood fell 

From grace, when vices overwhelm 
The purity of love's clear well. 

If evil thought sways reason's helm. 

The Satyric Byronic ''Weltschmerz" of the "Satan- 
ic School' of immorality. 

Parental stained incontinence. 

His nobler thought demoralized; 
Incestuous lust in foul offense, 

His dual nature bestialized; 
Learn how fair England's moral sense, 

Satyric Byron stigmatized. 



42 The Cosmic Comedy 

57 
Swinburne's awful tale of Ancient France. 

Read Swinburne's screed In allied form, 
Of ancient France, an awful tale; 

When lust-abandoned lives, a swarm 
Of lepers bred, yet in the scale 

Of death, slow, canc'rous, putrid, warm. 
How pity, love, could still prevail. 

Joan of Arc the White Lily of France. 

But from that sin-stained era dark. 
Whose purity marks mind's advance? 

The martyr who through trials stark, 
Still bore the virgin, stainless glance; 

The Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc, 
The lily chaste and white of France. 



CANTO IV 

''Imagination: — the child of sentiment and 
thought, has wings and for all her erratic flights in 
the kingdom of fancy, she now and then alights on 
a lofty crag in the ethereal realms of moral or re- 
ligious aspiration to find there an important truth, 
which slow-paced but sure-footed reason and science 
cannot as easily reach. . . . The metaphysical, the 
mystical, is so far from being outside of experience, 
that it is the very cornerstone of the possibility of 
experience." — Carus. 

"The Time needs heart — 'tis tired of head." 

* * * 

"Vainly might Plato's head revolve it; 
Plainly the heart of a child could solve it." 

Lanier. 

* 



CANTO IV 

59 
The wisdom of the Sages of the Ages, 

Pythagoras of old who heard 

The harmony that rules the spheres; 
Wise Plato, Aristotle stirred 

By cosmic thought in far-off years; 
A clearer view of good inferred, 

Than in your modern reign appears. 
60 

The Evolution of the comprehension of the Holy 
Trinity in God. 

In pagan days, good was the sun 

Whose spirit through Creation planed; 

Till good in father, good in son. 

Soul-good through mother-spirit reigned: 

At-ONE-ment in the TRIUNE, won 

GOD! MIND IMMACULATE was gained. 

61 
As simple as the solution of flight. 

As simple as from sand dune slips. 

The Wrights anew solved human flight; — 

Saw^ how the birds with tilting tips 
Of wings kept even balance right, 

'Neath tense control in windy dips; 

From Heaven to them again came light. 
45 



46 The Cosmic Comedy 

62 
All knowledge comes of super-nature or is of 
celestial origin. 

Of knowledge all that MIND received, 

In art and beauty on the Earth; 
Fond dreams by genius bright conceived; 

Of life beyond is but poor dearth; 
Let not the ego be deceived, 

From Heaven it sprang, there had its birth. 

63 

The evolution of humankind. 

Prolonged the way, of devious plan. 

As on through Time the ages sped, 
Who can the power of Wisdom scan. 

Which rules the living and the dead? 
The evolution long of man. 

The final goal to which we're led ? 

Ascent and descent of humankind through ani- 
mal ignorance continuous. 

Man rose from sea-slime high to will, 

To reason, godliness and worth; 
With woman, born of grace, to fill 

Redemption's work upon the earth ; 
Low they descend again to ill. 

When lust to deadly sins give birth. 

65 

The "Riddle of the Universe" unraveling. 

The ''Riddle of the Universe," 

Man's concept broadens with the years; 

No longer pulpits now rehearse 
The cruder, medieval fears 

Of Heaven and Hell, for men's converse. 
The truth that knowledge views, appears. 



Or the Vital Urge 47 

66 

Abuse of free-will in carnal lust and its dire con- 
sequences. 
With reason graced for good or ill, 

By light that comes from heaven above; 
Abuse the gift of your free will, 

Abuse the lesson of pure love, 
In flame you perish and are nil; 

As dust alone your ashes rove. 

67,, 

Examples from modern "Gott strafed'' aliens. 

O ! illustrations without number 

I could quote as dire example; 
They all history encumber, 

Our race yields us many a sample: 

(Aside to ME — der Kaiser — "You remember 
Krupp, and Max Harden's expose of Philipp 
von Eulenburg, Kuno von Moltke, etc.") 
Let their ghosts in silence slumber, 

Four from the Aliens Vice-Book ample. 
68 

Parnell, the Irish leader s treacherous adultery. 
Thus perished he of Erin's sons, 

A leader rare of brilliant worth, 
Whose life work, lust-perverted ones. 

Made but a theme for mocking mirth ; 
High o'er his grave, the story runs, 

His spirit flashed, flame-dust, to earth. 

69 

Oscar Wilde the Anglo-Irish poet's bestiality. 
That esthete poet also, who 

In lust, a genius mind debased. 
And lived his bestial crimes to rue 

When from the prison house he faced 
The world anew, — with pit>ang few, — 

He died in foreign land, — disgraced. 



48 The Cosmic Comedy 

70 
Boulanffers adulterous intrigue and suicide. 

See! snared by frail adulteress glance, 

From patriotic aims seduced, 
"Un maquereau" who dwelt in France; 

Aspiring Boulanger induced 
To lose brave fame in passion's trance; 

His fate, — to suicide reduced. 

71 

Stanford White the New York architect's liber- 
tinage and murder. 

Likewise of glorious New York fame 

That architect whose evil lust 
Young maiden innocence to shame 

Seduced in aging passion's gust; 
Beneath the mad avenger's aim 

He fell, — a clod of worthless dust. 
72 

Hell, — the Creation of Pride and the deadly 
sins. 

From outer Hell, foul minds create 

Again I say, the raging storm; 
There pride, lust, malice, envy, hate. 

Disasters, tumults, warfare, form; 
Till good anew controlling fate, 

Bids peace resume the primal norm. 

73 
Souls awaiting Redemption. 

For we within the pit and veil. 

Who have not passed to ultimate 
Of good ; whose souls have dropt the scale 

Of matter, now perceive with hate, 
The ill which keeps without the pale. 

The egoists who fool with fate. 



Or the Vital Urge 49 

74 
God's Everlasting Mercy. 

Yet, stars glean for the Cosmic Soul 
The cores of loving hearts which fail 

To reach Eternity's sure goal; 
Outside of Heaven now they sail 

In periods on from pole to pole, 
Until the Judgment Day they hail. 

75 
AT-ONE-ment with the Universal Mind. 

Until the kin of their own race. 

The loved ones left in worlds behind, 
The rightful path to Heaven trace. 

And in the Universal Mind, 
Rejoined by love's redeeming grace, 

The peace of God through Christ, shall find. 
76 

The JUDGMENT DAY. 

For then that great resplendent Day 

In light will merge the Universe ; 
While evil swept in flame away, 

To outer darkness wull disperse; 
And Good — eternal GOD — alway, 

Shall lift from humankind, its curse. 



CANTO V 

"There's not the smallest orb that thou beholdest, 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims; 
Such harmony is in immortal souls; 
But while this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close us in we cannot hear it." 

Shakespeare, 

"Bards of Passion and of Mirth 
Who have left your souls on earth! 
Have ye souls in heaven too, 
Double-lived in regions ntw? 

— Yes, and those of heaven commune 
With the spheres of sun and moon; 
With the noise of fountains wonderous 
And the parle of voices thunderous; 
With the whisper of heaven's trees 
And one another, in soft ease 
Underneath large blue-bells tented, 
Where th«e daisies are rose-scented, 
And the rose herself has got 
Perfume which on earth is not; 
Where the nightingale doth sing 
Not a senseless, tranced thing. 
But divine melodious truth ; 
Philosophic numbers smooth; 
Tales and golden histori^es 
Of heaven and its mysteries." 

Keats, 



CANTO V 

77 
''GOD is a SPIRIT r 

To those who seek HIM from their youth, 

"GO(0)D is a Spirit," said the CHRIST, 
And they who worship HIM in truth 

And spirit, find Faith has sufficed 
To bring to them in love's pure ruth 

The peace of HIM,— THE SACRIFICED! 
78 

St. Augustine s formula for resignation to the 
will of Go(o)d. 
Thou made us for Thyself, O Lord ! 

And restless is each mind, until 
Thy grace divine Thou dost accord. 

To find true peace, no heart is still 
Until Thou dost Thine help afford, 

Until we yield unto Thy Will. 

79 
Faith corrects the defects of Science, 

Where Science slow and Reason fail, 

Where mortal brain no change discernest; 
There Faith for all defects avail; 

There Faith the lesson quickly learnest; 
The love of GO(0)D will still prevail 

If but the seeking mind be earnest. 
80 

Vaughn s vision of Heaven. 
For here in outer darkness bound. 

We view from shades of starlit night. 
The solar systems circling round 

"Eternity's great ring of light," 
The Heaven that Vaughn in vision found, 

*'Of endless calm, all pure and bright". 
53 



54 The Cosmic Comedy 

8i 
Sanctus bells and the beauty of celestial calm. 

No evil minds there ever mar 

The beauty of celestial calm; 
Pure thoughts of love alone, afar, 

Like incense rise and fragrant balm, 
With Sanctus bells, — w^hen Heaven ajar 

On God's day hears the noontide psalm. 
82 

The Halls of Heaven. 

Then, — far beyond the stars, the Halls 
Of Heaven we see, abodes of rest; 

Grand organ tones, glad trumpet calls, 
The cohorts summon of the blest. 

To hear along the jasper v^^alls, 
The joy by faithful souls possest. 

83 

Archanffels and the Angel Host. 

From palaces, whose towers dim, 

In lucent glory high, are lost; 
From temple, fane, — saint, seraphim. 

Archangels and the angel host, 
Laud evermore in rising hymn, 

GOD— Father, Son and Holy Ghost. 

84 
The raiment robes of color cloud. 

The corridors of Heav'n they crowd; 

With love their radiant faces glow; 
In fleece-like raiment robed of cloud. 

In gorgeous colors, to and fro 
They go, they fly, they sing aloud, 

"Through Good, eternal blessings flow!" 



Or the Vital Urge 55 

85 
The concord of the Cosmic Octave. 

Bright overtones each outer sphere, 

Arpeggic, brilliant, harplike, sound: 
While inner spheres reecho clear 

The cosmic octave in them found: 
Harmonic chords of beauty rear 

Concordant anthems, rolling round. 
86 

The tone color of the Heavenly Spheres. 

Tone colors, springing near and far, 

Prismatic, fill the auroral dark; 
Impinging on each distant star, 

Sound flashes with a golden spark, 
And reaching space's farthest bar. 

With tints and hues supernal mark. 

87 

MUSIC — the Language of Heaven. 

The Heavenly ramparts thrill with song; 

Rare music in divinest strains, 
Becomes the universal tongue. 

The language of the Heavenly plains: 
"To GOD, our homage, praise, belong!" 

Rise evermore the glad refrains. 
88 

The Blessed Damozel or Life, Youth and Hope. 

No languid sigh, resounding tear. 

The product of nepenthic dreams; 
No "blessed damozel" we hear; 

The "bar her bosom warms," her squeams 
Are there unknown ; for vision clear 

Of youth, life, hope, eternal gleams. 



^6 The Cosmic Comedy 

89 
The Wise and Radiant EONS. 

There wise and radiant EONS chaste 

Of human love, rare symphonies; 
A virile blend, in glory haste 

On rising, swelling harmonies, 
The joys of Paradise to taste 

In MIND'S divinest purities. 
90 

Their asexual gift of Self-Control. 

The gift theirs was on mundane spheres 

To gain of sexless self-control; 
Their bodies, passions, hopes and fears. 

Refined through mind in heart and soul; 
Until transfigured, each appears 

In Heaven, a glorious, blended whole. 

91 
The natural beauties of Heaven. 

In gardens of delight they rove. 

Where beast and bird and tree and flower, 
From fountain, mountain, hill and grove, 

From river, vale, and leafy bower, 
With attributes of mind and love, 

Proclaim God's all-pervading power. 
92 

The TRIUNE LOGOS Praise of Heaven. 

They with the Heavenly hosts combine 
To sing the swelling TRIUNE song; 

"GOD! MOTHER-SPIRIT! CHRIST 
DIVINE! 
The strain on high rings clear and strong; 

The LOGOS 'Life-Lov^-Light'— is THINE!" 
On fragrant winds is borne along. 



Or the Vital Urge 57 

93 
The Safeguarded Faith of Christ's Church, 

For ever singing round GOD'S throne, 
How full of joy their lays, they are; 

Revealing in each holy tone 

Safeguarded Faith, in praise they are; 

Through Father, Mother-Spirit, Son! 
Sancta! MATER! Ecclesia! 

94 
The curse of Eve atoned for through the pure- 
horn Eon-Child. 

The curse of Eve is reconciled, 

The path from Earth to Heaven is run; 

Each Eon-Mother's pure born child, 
For both God's Paradise has v^ron: 

The Father and the Virgin mild, 

With joy look on the Exemplar Son. 

95 
Desire of Nations! God's great Avatar, 

While higher still the anthems ring, 
"Before all vv^orlds that were and are, 

Of David's line, root, stem, offspring, 
Christ is the bright and morning star! 

'Desire of Nations!' loud they sing, 
'God's Son!' His own great Avatar!" 

. . 96 

The Beatific Vision of the Sacred Trinity, 

And then appears a radiant sight; 

Three auras blend upon the gaze; 
Harmonious rings high Heaven with might, 

The TRINITY— a perfect blaze,— 
True God— ONE GOD— The God of light, 

We view with awe, in mute amaze. 



CANTO VI 

We are "the owners of the sphere, 
Of the Milky Way and the solar year, 
Of Phidias' art and Mozart's strain, 
Of Lord Christ's heart and Plato's brain." 

Emerson. 

"Give us the Consoler who may soothe away the 
fear of death." 

Socrates. 



CANTO VI 

97 

Eddy J Channing, Swedenborg in mind-visions. 

E'en Eddy, Channing, Swedenborg, seers 

Of atavistic Catholic birth, 
In MIND could see celestial spheres 

Beyond this solar system's girth: 
Their thought — the mortal brain reveres, 

They walked with GOD upon the earth. 

98 

The Transcendentalism of New England. 
Their Transcendentalism, what 

Is it but spirit vision pure? 
The Church of Christ has always taught 

Will come to those, who firm and sure, 
The peace of God through faith have sought; 

That joy which can alone endure. 

99 
The Faith in Heaven made secure. 

Their eyes are gleaming lamps of prayer, 

Whose lives in higher love endure; 
And from them glows the radiance rare 

That kindred souls with hope assure; 
For in them dwells the spirit fair 

Of faith in Heaven made secure. 
100 

The Light of Christ the Love of God. 
To search the cosmic spheres clysian. 

Faith leading high from earth abroad, 
True, noble minds of purpose, mission, 

Gain swift the gift upon the road. 
To view in beatific vision, 

The Light of Christ! the Love of God! 
61 



62 The Cosmic Comedy 

lOI 

They find immortal Life in Death. 

So when from earthly scenes away, 
Their souls pass on the fleeting breath 

To light of everlasting day, 

Theirs is the gain, the Spirit saith, 

To dwell with God in love alway, 
To find immortal life in death. 

102 
The crown of faith. Immortal life, 

glorious hope to mortals given. 

Who there, where grief and woe are rife, 
By hell-born warring passion riven. 

Now faint and fall beneath the strife, 
To find eternal joy in Heaven, 

The crown of faith. Immortal life! 

103 
Nietzsche, the self -thought Master of Universal 
Knowledge. 

The sciences as taught in college. 

Philosophy and language, arts. 
The sphere entire of finite knowledge. 

Humanities and social parts, 

1 thought I had in full controllage, 
A master of all wisdom's marts. 

104 
The definite Theology of CHRIST the 
CRUCIFIED. 

So spurned in Time's cosmology, 
That vast, revolving, ceaseless grind, 

Through lessons of mytholog}', 
Till Bible history we find, 

The definite theology 

In CHRIST the CRUCIFIED enshrined. 



Or the Vital Urge 63 

105 
The fate of Minoan Kultur, 

Learn back from evil mythic days, 

How Daedalus gained human flight; 
Coached Pasiphae in vicious ways, 

Till Cretan "Kultur," at its height, 
Fell in foul ruin, vile, ablaze, 

Beneath avenging Grecian might. 
106 

Education without true religion ever fails, 

O Lord! how long will history teach 

That education riseth never, 
When from religious spirit, each 

Proud system will its purpose sever! 
(To me, — der Kaiser — ) 
See, fool! how ''kultur," Germans reach, 

Greeks, Cretans, all, — fails — faileth ever, 
107 

Masters of fate and Captains of Souls, 

You may be master of your fate. 

You may be captain of your soul; 
The old conventions you may hate 

And scornful satire on them roll; 
But strait — through Wisdom — is the gait 

That leads the soul to Heaven's goal. 



CANTO VII 

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither 
are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are 
higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than 
your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." 

"O for the Poet Voice that swells 
To lofty truths or noblfe curses; 
I only wear the cap and bells 

And yet some tears are in my verses." 

Frederick Locker, 



CANTO VII 

1 08 

Music, prose, verse, the facile gifts of agile minds. 
The lilt of music, prose and verse, 

From life's rut still the human lifts; 
The agile mind will oft rehearse 

And exercise such facile gifts; 
In "Stiirm und Drang" of fate adverse, 

The grievous burden off it shifts. 
109 

Wit evermore Griefs greatest grafter. 
The heart in pain, the soul in tears, 

The mind that masks its woe with laughter; 
Who thinks upon Time's flying years, 

On vast Eternity's hereafter; 
In saving humor drowns all fears; 

Wit evermore is grief's great grafter, 
no 

The Byronic Weltzschmerz: the Cosmic Agony. 
With reason plain, to bring — in vain — 

Ideal and real in harmony, 
My arrogant, conceited brain 

Strove 'neath the vast theogony. 
And snapt in pain of 'Sveltzschmerz" strain, 

The cosmic world-birth agony. 
Ill 

Gethsemane and Calvary. Nietzsche^s last 
Admission. 
Gethsemane! GETHSEMANE! 

The innocence of ONE who died! 
The lesson of HIS agony 

For ever humbles ego pride ! 
My soul goes seared to CALVARY ! 

My last sigh was "THE CRUCIFIED !'' 
67 



68 The Cosmic Comedy 

112 

Historic appeals against lust. 

Fair Eden's blighted bowers sighed 

On whispering winds of lust that cloyed ; 

Young Abel's bier; Mount Sinai cried 

At lust, — while thundering light deployed; 

Mount Calvary's quivering victim died, 
Sad, moaning, — *'Lust must be destroyed!" 

113 
Remembrance : Crime: Remorse. 

Remembrance clear recalls each deed; 

Reflected back in madd'ning throng; 
Reacted, crimes anew will bleed, 

Will reappear, dire scenes of wrong; 
Remorse for evermore will breed 

In all, — however weak or strong. 
114 

Heaven s liffht-fixinff record of all earthly deeds. 

For flashed from Earth by God's clear light, 

Each incident of mortal life 
Reflects right into Heaven's own bright 

Resplendent lens; a record rife 
Of good — or ill — for all who fight 

To win — or perish — in the strife. 

115 

Nietzsche laments his ignorance^ evil thought 
and writing. 

Now when upon my w^ork I think 

That "Sacred Lore" with scorn tradudes; 

To darkest depths my spirits sink; 
"For blessings, curses and such uses," 

(From evil that I wrote, I shrink,) 
^'Another mans wife, GOD seducesl" 

(The vilest imperceptive thought ever penned by 
any man.) 



Or the Vital Urge 69 

116 
TRUTH, Voltaire, and the Cartesian method. 

Had I Truth's elemental seat, 

Cartesian-like sought and imparted; 
No ridicule in self-conceit 

On base Voltairean ideas started; 
I might have led to Wisdom's feet 

The world, — and shone as great, wise-hearted. 

117 
Subjective womanhood and Religion s aim. 

And yet the aim has been for good. 

But class and pride to reason blind, 
Have held subjective womanhood. 

And tell me where on Earth you find 
Pure sisterhood and brotherhood, 

CHRIST taught should govern humankind? 
118 

Sex-comrades' Purity of Mind and Thought 
brings the AGE OF WISDOM. 
For equal rites arise appeals, 

Mind comradeships of sex enfold: 
Your 'kiiche-kinder-kirche' spiels 

For w^omanhood no longer hold: 
Sex purity of thought reveals 

The AGE OF WISDOM long foretold. 

119 ^ 

Renan, Zola and Nietzsche's perceptive failure 
to grasp in Eugenics the theory of "The IMMAC- 
ULATE CONCEPTION'' formulated finally in 
1854, only. 
Like Renan, Zola, I sought Truth, 

But how we failed in pure perception, 
Nor grasped the Churchman brain, in ruth, 

Was seeking for the grand inception. 
As mentor both for love and youth. 

Of CHRIST'S IMMACULATE CONCEP- 
TION. 



70 The Cosmic Comedy 

1 20 
THE VIRGIN BIRTH. 

Of that Divine and Virgin Birth — 

The Church still vainly strives to teach 
To minds of lower mental girth ; 

Its symbolism fails to reach 
The men and w^omen of the Earth; — 

For blind men still to blind men preach* 
121 

Modern ethic teachings of Gentiles and Hebrews 
compared. 

In vain most Christian sects, surprised, 
Bewail the fact vrith loud beseechings ; 

The varied churches w^hich they prized, 
Are bare and empty to their preachings; 

Through movies, Hebrews once despised, 
With profit spread clean, ethic teachings. 

(and N. B. mostly from Gentile examples of un- 
clean living.) 

122 
Luther s successful revolt encouraged Henry 
VIII's crimes. 

With Luther's erring at their root. 

The crimes of Henry Tudor rise; 
Faith-killer! wife-beheading brute! 

Through you the vicious strain outvies 
To yield an evil, viler fruit: 

The whole world bears the sacrifice. 

* Showing but little comprehension of Catholic or even 
Calvinistic doctrines, it must be remembered that Nietz- 
sche's virulent diatribes were aimed at the Lutheran 
Church whose confused teachings he could not fathom, 
although the son of a Lutheran divine. 



\ 



Or the Vital Urge 71 

123 
The fate of Charles of England: Louis of 
France; and the Kaiser s doom. 

King Charles of England lost his head, 

And France's Louis: — victims they, 
Inheriting the vice inbred 

That swines your stripe of regal sway; 
Both you and yours in fear and dread, 

Now tread that fated lost-head way. 
124 

Also his weak kinsman Czar Nicholas of Rus- 
sians fate. 
Czar Nicholas of Russia, too, 

Has met the death of foul disgrace; 
Your poor, weak 'Nicky', false, untrue. 

Has paid the martyr debt of race; 
And you and yours, your fate is due, 

Death's firing squad to stand and face. 
1,25 

Nietzsche dodges a kick from Bismarck as he 
tells of the Canossian Kulturkampf. 
His 'Kulturkampf (b) old Bismarck waged 

Against the Church of Christ in vain: 
A world aghast, a world enraged, 

Some German 'Kultur' sees again: 
The heathen in foul terror staged : 

Brute man, fierce, rank and stenched with stain. 
126 

Eucken, Freud and German scientists failure to 
grasp elemental essentials. 
Sage Eucken, pottering around. 

Mimes, "Can we still all Christians be?" 
And mired in German crime is found: 

Freud's lust-brained confreres cannot see 
That high above Earth's narrow bound 

The spirit soars in vision free. 



72 The Cosmic Comedy 

127 
Revelation, the basis of all knowledge and science. 

And from the hidden Universe 

Draws light from God's eternal light: 
For scientists in facts they verse, 

Confirm and but retell aright 
The truth revealed, divines rehearse 

By faith and hope through God's good might. 
128 

Michael, the guardian spirit of Israel's faith, 
gathers his hosts for the Battle of Armagedon. 

The final fight o'er lust to score. 

The victory of God to win, 
Michaelian western hosts for war, 

At Har-Magedon gather in 
To slay — the Cross of Christ before, — 

Your devil-spirits, steeped in sin. 
129 

Flagellum Dei — the Scourge of God. 

Flagellum Dei! Scourge of God! 

Again you stalked the lust-stained earth; 
To lay vice bare with iron rod, 

Attilaesque, of vicious birth. 
You steeped with blood the reeking sod, 

That man might learn Christ's precious worth. 

130 
Civilization sacrificed and Humanity crucified. 

By pride of "will to power" enticed, 

A racial bred insanity; 
All civilization sacrificed 

To your egregious vanity; 
The cost, the world now sees was priced 

In crucified humanity. 



Or the Vital Urge 73 

131 
The Era of Federated Humanity. 

Still from your crimes will spring the good 
THE CRUCIFIED,— THE MARTYR, 
— taught : 
Sealed in your sacrifice of blood 

By man and womankind 'tis sought 
The Age of Federal Humanhood, 
The goal, in arrogance you fought. 

132 
Apostate Julian and the Pale Galilean s Triumph. 

While you will voice the Julian cry 

That late repentant Tartarean 
Apostate, on his dying sigh, 

Sent down through Time, a soulful paean : 
"Old gods are dead and from on high 

THOU CONQUEREST! PALE GALI- 
LEAN !" 

With this climax, I — "der Kaiser" — hoped that 
the nightmare had finished, when— 



CANTO VIII 

"For this purpose have I raised thee up to show 
in thee my power and that my name may be de- 
clared among all the nations of the earth." 

"Wherever Jesus Christ is worshiped there is 
the Catholic Church." — Ignatius. 

"Clear and positive as an Alp in the sunrising 
stands forth that sublime ideal." — Netuman Smyth. 

"Lo! the Kingdom of God is within you!" Puri- 
fied above all the sphere of controversy, Catholi- 
cism in America has asserted its rightful position, 
not as a system, nor as a creed, but as an individual, 
a personal ideal in each human soul. 

The Third Advent of Christ. — "For as the light- 
ning when it lighteneth out of the one part of the 
heaven under the heaven, shinteth unto the other 
part under heaven, so shall be the great day of the 
coming of Christ." 



CANTO VIII 

Luther suddenly appeared and started up with- 
out any preliminaries. 

133 

The Kaiser s paltry boast of German power in 
the United States. 
O you ! you dared to utter boast 

That in the fair United States, 
You! paltry Kaiser! was a toast 

For beer and sausage fed-up pates; 
That they would rise a mighty host? — 

Let them beware — their evil fates! 

134 

America lost to Britain through German autoc- 
racy. 
That greatest gem of Britain's crown 

Was lost just through a German fool; 
The third George tried his best to down 

America's free will to rule ; 
Grand Imbecile! again a clown 

His race has bred, — another mule! 

"You surely are not lese-majestically alluding to 
me?" I — der Kaiser — asked furiously and threaten- 
ingly, but Luther went on serenely: — 

135 
Honest opinion of German vermin. 

For there is heard on every side 

In honest nostrils stink the German; 

Far worse than Jews long scarified; 
Ach! every Fritz (h)un)d* every Hermann, 

Through all your damnable fool-pride. 

They rank as — yes! rank German vermin. 

* "hun-hund-und" take your choice: — A. 

77 



78 The Cosmic Comedy 

Gerard's suggestion for rebellious German aliens, 

"No wonder," interjected Luther; "Ambassador 
Gerard told your emissaries: — 
'Five hundred thousand lamp-posts there 

Await such evil-brewing thinkers; 
Let them a rise for favor dare; 

Strung up will be your fat beer drinkers ; 
A bunch for carrion crow to share 

Will fateful fall such heedless tinkers/ 

137 
The braggart sneer: ''America wont fight/' 

Why did you sneer, you braggart bright! 

"America won't fight": they've lickt us; 
With vim of right, with vim they smite, 

For submarining foul, they've kickt us; 
Truth — Virtue — Valor, win o'er might. 

You woke in them "Virtus Vim Victus!" 

138 

The swollen-headed Megalomanian demoniac. 

O swollen-headed autocrat! 

Stuck-up megalomaniac! 
You, saphead! soon will find you're at 

No place within the zodiac; 
Your overbearing all will bat. 

Proud, arrogant demoniac! 

139 
Efficiency : The Kaiser s shibboleth and gibberish. 

Efficiency — your vaunt deplored, — 

In self-pride you for conquest cherish; 

Loud you addr^ess your "Gott" and Lord! 
With shibboleth, with gih-berish ; 

(Luther shaking his forefinger at me — der Kaiser:) 

Who would force peace by might of sword, 
As ever by the sword shall perish. 



I 



Or the Vital Urge 79 

140 
The Crucifixion of Satan in the Kaiser, 

Hung high as Haman, trussed and triced, 

Humanity — the world to win, 
The DEVIL should be sacrificed 

In you — Satanus! — and your kin, 
Since GOD was crucified in CHRIST, 

Humanity to save from sin. 

141 

The Kaiser s love of the democratic propaganda, 

Ach ! w^hen you think of speakers bold, 

You rage and fume, you fuss and fret, 
And wish they w^ould their truths withhold, 

Or act so that within your net, 
The tribe entire you could enfold. 

For there you hope to get them yet. 
142 

The curse of a lust- filled race. 

But touch a hair of one brave head! 

Both you and yours will haste to go 
Where you will ever rue in dread 

The horrors you have worked below: 
Such are the curses in you bred, 

You on our lust-filled race bestow. 

143 
The Kaiser s silly notion. 

You alkaloidal poison drop 

In great Eternity's vast ocean! 
The world to dominate and top. 

Was your conceited, silly notion ; 
Democracy, your game to stop, 

Soon set its forces all in motion. 



8o The Cosmic Comedy 

144 

'' W eltmacht" or "Niederganff'' World-domina- 
tion or downfall. 
"Weltmacht" or "niedergang" your aim, 

''World-domination" or "downfall"! 
Lust — Moloch- — known of old, by name, 

Your ''good old god", on whom you call. 
Your "machtfrage — trial of strength" in shame, 

A "nauf rage-ship wreck" now does sprawl. 

145 

'^Abshrecken — an awful example^' like Napo- 
leon the Third. 
"War is hell-fire", you truly said 

For all who madly enter in : 
Like Nap the Third, you lost your head 

And wallowed in his wake of sin ; 
"Abschrecken" you, in hell-fire red, 

The penalty of pride to win. 
146 

The Devils brood of Supermen s war against 
federated democracy. 
The perils of autocracy 

That drench the world with human blood; 
The pride of aristocracy, 

Of supermen, — the Devil's brood! — 
The triumph of democracy 

Shall see in federal humanhood. 

147 

Mary, the Mother, and John, the Evangelic 
Eagle, the Guardian Spirits of the United States. 
For through the Western hemisphere. 

That eagle land of liberal thought; 
From bias free, in vision clear 

To you the lesson has been brought: 
The MOTHER-SPIRIT guards the sphere 

And will redress the wrongs you wrought. 



Or the Vital Urge 8i 

148 
The bisex struggle everlasting. 

While sages prophesied for good, 

In expectation firm forecasting 
The dawn of peace, the reign of God! 

How vile defilement, ever-blasting, 
Immortal love has lustward trod 

In bisex struggle everlasting. 
149 

The Eighteenth Century Cyclopedic error. 

When cyclopedists woke all men 

To life, from feudalistic trance 
For liberty! what crimes were then 

Committed in the world advance! 
Through pride of will, of thought, of pen, 

Hell's "red fool fury" burst in France. 
150 

The Guardian Spirits of the British Isles. 

Saints Michael, George, and Andrew strove 
Throughout the world, lust's evil seeds 

To slay: while brave Saint Patrick drove 
Those serpents from old Ireland's meads: 

But Satan still the world w^ould rove 
Should Prussia triumph in ill deeds. 

151 

The Allied Nations' battle cry. 

"Lord! Triune God of Israel!" 

The allied nations battling, cry, 
"Our people save from sin and hell, 

Thy Cross and standard raise on high, 
In faith. Thy foes we now defy, 

God! — Christ with us — Emmanuel!" 



82 The Cosmic Comedy 

152 
The British redeemers of ancient Germany. 

How you have strayed beyond the fold ! 

Since Ferghil wise, great Boniface, 
Sane Britons bold with hearts of gold, 

Lioba, Thecla, brave of race. 
The "Vaterland" in days of old. 

Illumed with God's redeeming grace. 

153 
The Union Jack, the Stripes and Bars: the Wis- 
dom leading to the Stars, 

Still, borne above the storm and loss 
Of world-uplift, — when warfare mars. 

Great Britain bears its double cross; 
America, — blood stripes and bars; 

O'er chaos foul, where proud fiends toss 
The wisdom leading to the stars. 

154 
The Trinity's bright oriflamrnes of France. 

The German cross — as black of old, 
The Russian blue cross shadows — see! 

While Italy's white cross — b^ehold! 

And France's, — points, with lilies three, — 

On flags, white, blue, red, green and gold, 
Still wave for God's great Trinity! 

("Liberty, Equality, Fraternity") 

155 
The ''Accent of the Holy Ghost/' 

Each faithless, godless generation 

In war, religion's aim has tossed; 
And yet the gain of feneration 

Your sinful world has never lost; 
The Mother guards with veneration 

Her "accent of the 'Holy Ghost.' " 



Or the Vital Urge 83 

156 
Veneration of Motherhood the World's Re- 
demption. 

Raise motherhood to Heaven's bar; 

The world redeemed shall find salvation; 
Go! spread that gospel wide and far 

To every tribe and every nation, 
Until there glows in Rose and Star, 

The federated consummation! 

157 
The sneers and laughter of petty minds and 
ignorant muck-rakers. 

Small, vicious brains may sneer and laugh, 
Muck rakers with their eyes on dung; 

The wheat is winnowed from the chaif ; 
The Church's praise — for God — is sung; 

The Shepherd wields the guiding staff. 
The Mother guards her infant young. 

158 

''Things in Themselves/' Mind; Reason; 
Wisdom. 

"Things in themselves" that are, she knows, 

But wisdom bids her bide her time. 
Till from the laic MIND there flows 

Perception fit for age and clime; 
Adoption from her teaching grows, 

Though slow is Reason's upward climb. 

159 
CHRIST and HIS CHURCH comes to bring 
PEACE. 

To bring it peace and not the sword. 

The Church of Christ comes down to Earth ; 

The lesson of the dying Lord, 

Had you but sensed its moral worth. 



84 The Cosmic Comedy 

To dwell in brotherly accord, 

You might have given the world "New Birth!" 

(Luther aside, "You will anyway, but at what 
sacrifice.") 

160 
Do all roads lead through ROME to GOD? 

Pride always goes before a fall, 

Howe'er exalted is the clod; 
Life's mystery o'erwhelms us all; 

And you shall bow beneath the rod; 
The pill no doubt is bitter gall: 
WHAT? (as I — der Kaiser — cynically asked: — ) 

Must all roads lead through ROME— to GOD? 
161 

The Great Fact of the Church of Christ. 

Luther quite impersonally continuing: — 

Aye! from and through, for there Christ's Church 

Its firm foundations set intact: 
Though mortal errors sway and lurch. 

And blindly imperceptive act; 
Though Truth and Faith they foul and smirch, 

PETRUS— it stands— A ROCK— A FACT! 
162 

The Stronghold of Faith, WISDOM and the 
Sciences. 



The stronghold of reliances 

On Faith — the mind of Cosmos vast; 
The key to all the sciences 

The WISDOM of the ages past. 
She steadfast clasps. Defiances 

In vain are hurled, against her cast. 



Or the Vital Urge 



163 
Children of the Carnal Devil. 

You of the swine-fed coarsened mind; 

You children of the carnal devil; 
Material, gross, to spirit blind ; 

Who cannot rise above earth's level; 
She seeks to save by precept kind; 

You who in lust of flesh will revel. 
164 

Idealized life. Divine Philosophy , and the sepa- 
rated brethren. 

Idealizing human life. 

The lowest elements, she reaches. 
To harmonize the faction rife. 

The separated brethren teaches 
In reverent prayer, to end the strife: 

Divine philosophy she preaches. 

165 

The Mothering care of Christ's^ Church — God's 
Light. 

O'er all the earth with parent care, 

Christ's Church, the bridegroom and the bride, 
The burden of the Cross they bear: 

Although the children, erring wide, 
Her counsel flaunt through evil snare, 

God's Light still shines at eventide. 
166 

The Call of Jesus — GOD through Mary- 
Maiden. 

Come unto Me, ye heavy-laden! 
All ye who grieve and are distrest! 
O come and I will give you rest! 



86 The Cosmic Comedy 

Pleads Jesus — GOD — through Mary, maiden, 

Of all beliefs, the highest, best : 
CHRIST'S CHURCH is Earth's own Heavenly 
Aiden 
For all who with true Faith are blest. 

167 
The Divine Vision safeguarded by the 
CHURCH. 

To keep in view the Heavenly vision, 

His sons their lives have sacrificed; 
They bear through ill the priestly mission, 

Their faith in God's will has sufficed 
To gain for them the gift elysian, 

They dwell with CHRIST— 

Their CHURCH is CHRIST. 
168 

Christendom and the World finally united 
through Zionism at Jerusalem, 

GOD IS IN HEAVEN. The Cosmic Mind 
Is working still through ancient Rome; 

The Age of Womanhood refined 

Will surely through her teaching come; 

And Christ the World uniting find 
Again on Zion's Mount His home. 



Or the Vital Urge 87 

169 
THE WORLD implores GOD'S sign, 

SUPPLICATION 

O God ! we cry, LORD ! give the sign ! 
O talk to folk and end all sin! 

GOD! haste the day for which we pine! 

A warring world THY GRACE would win ! 

The WILL OMNIPOTENT is THINE! 
CHRIST! let THY KINGDOM now begin! 

AMEN. 

Here Luther ending, vanished, and I — der Kaiser 
— your father, must continue the recital of this 
awful nightmare to the bitter end. 



CANTO IX 



"Sub diversis speciebus 
Signus tantum et non rebus 
Latent res eximiae." 



— Aquinas. 



"Someday one will get a sign 
And talk to folk and put an end to sin 
And then God's blessed kingdom will begin." 

— Masefield. 

"Lily of Israel! 
Lily of Purity! 
Lily of Righteousness! 

COR MARIAE! 
As America to her again 
Has turned with filial respect, 
Upholding her in might of right! 
May Britain! 
"Mary's Dower!" 
Return to CHRIST! 
CHRIST'S CHURCH! 
AMEN! 
— American-Catholic Prayer. 



CANTO IX 

170 

Bismarck kicks the Kaiser. 
"Now go," said Bismarck, with a kick 

That spluttered my ethereal frame, 
And like a rocket on a stick, 

Sent me with helpless, raging shame, 
CANOSSA-ward? No! slick and quick, 

Straight into hell's eternal flame. 
171 

The kick beats TNT, DYN, or Terrorall. 
O Trinitrotol-lol-uol ! 

O Dynamite, they're very good! 
While best of all is Terrorall ! 

They're great to make cadaver food ! 
MIHI! that kick their powers pall, 

You never would believe it could. 
172 

The Kaiser s non-stop passage to Hell. 

Throughout the fourteen rolling spheres, 

'Tis said, a blazing meteor fell: 
My sinful soul, it now appears. 

Passed as a streak, a shriek, a yell; 
Beelzebubs and Lucifers 

Yanked me with glee deep into Hell. 

173 
The King of the German murderers. 

There e'en in Hell my nerve went cold 

As dancing round me in a string, 
The devils bold with scorn and scold. 

All proud and loud, this chant did sing: — 
"Those German murderers! — Behold! 

This thing — der Kaiser — was their King!" 

(Sons, that will tell you — what in Hell you- 
amount to.) 

91 



92 The Cosmic Comedy 

174 _ 
Satan s Tribute to the Kaiser. 

While off hfs throne Abaddon came 

With bow profound down to my level; 
You "brilliant First!" now we with shame 

But homage must around you revel; 
No need to ask your name and fame, 

You're Kaiser Bill who beats the Devil. 

(And then he too kicked me.) 

175 
Those ice-cold haberdasher London snickerers, 

"Mein Gott!" I cried, when toed with flames, 

"Lord! is it I alone who sinned?" 
For on the banks of London Thames, 

There ice-cold haberdashers grinned, 
As if these were Olympic games, 

Where to and fro my soul was shinned. 
176 

Earth's Salt the Breeds Superior. 

While rooting in my frame there came 

This arriere-pensee — thought posterior, — 
To Latins, Angles, Yanks aflame 

With righteous wrath, how far inferior 
We are, I now admit in shame: 

They are Earth's salt, — the breeds superior. 
177 

The eonic sexless blend of English lanffuage. 

And from my mother's language clear 
Jhere flashed to mind the neuter tend 

That tongue has, on this Babel sphere. 
Attained through male and female end; 

Eonic in its speech sincere. 

The consummated sexless blend. 



Or the Vital Urge 93 

The Hiffhest Good — the Purity of Mind Con- 
ception. 

Think! in that language for the mass 

The highest good in pure conception, 
King Arthur's white-souled sons of class — 

Maintain with truth of faith's inception: 
Light to the world has come to pass, 

Revealed by the7n through mind perception. 
179 

Impanation, Consubstantiation and Transub- 
stantiation. 

For in the substance there does flow 

In light that springs from impanation, 
And with the substance shining show, 

Revealed with consubstantiation, 
Christ's presence from the substance glow 

Beyond, through transubstantiation. 
180 

Wesley and the demoralized period of the Angli- 
can church. 
Johy Wesley who restored with power 

The method, discipline and order 
Of Christ's true Church, when pervert, lower 

Had sunk the English Church — a warder 
Of moral might became, — a tower 

Of Catholic truth — a firm recorder. 
181 

The Catholic-minded author of the "Age of 
Reason.'' 
Also that Deist, Thomas Paine, 

The author of "The Age of Reason," 
Was simply struggling back again 

In mind a firmer faith to season; 
To make the Catholic virtues plain ; 

His work for God was never treason. 



94 The Cosmic Comedy 

182 
The Despair of Science; the Hope of Faith. 

Of faith and science — which is dafter? 

Faith sparkling bright with inspiration, 
Or science, reason, groping after 

In hopeless, mental flagellation. 
Their fruit — despair! while faith with laughter, 

Draws hope and joy from revelation. 

183 

The regenerated race of new men. 

"Lead, kindly light," and recreate 

New men, "the faith our fathers knew," 
Sang Newman, Faber, Manning, great 

In British scholarship to view 
The errors that with evil fate 

God's grace long from their race withdrew. 
184 

Faith restored in Great Britain. 

To blend in social humanhood, 

O'er Britain's isle with hovering wing, 

The Mother-Spirit seems to brood: 
Her great cathedrals soon will ring 

With faith, long lost, misunderstood, 

Of Christ— through Mary— GOD, our King. 

Faith revivified and the Golden Age revived in 
Ireland 

While Erin, too, fair Irish isle. 

Where peace, a thousand years, once reigned, 
Wisdom again shall reconcile 

The Mother-faith, so long enchained; 
The Golden Age again shall smile, 

God's love there ever be sustained. 



Or the Vital Urge 95 

186 
The Redemption of the chosen race of Israel, 

And Hebrew maids of Mary's line. 

And scattered Judah's prophet race, 
The Rose of Sharon will refine 

And their long martyrdom efface ; 
On them the Light of Christ will shine, 

On them will dawn Emmanuel's grace. 

187 

The Dispute of the Sacrament ended. 

While all who doubted and contended, 

In intellectual pride upstanding, 
Will find their thought in Wisdom blended. 

According to each mind's expanding; 
Till there shall come when wars have ended, 

God's peace to every understanding. 



CANTO X 

"The passionate will, the pride, the wrath 
That bore him headlong on his path, 
Shall stumble and stagger him into fear, 
And fail him in his mad career: 
Contrition, penitence, and remorse, 
Shall come with overwhelming force. 
By days of penance, nights of prayer, 
To try and frustrate deep despair." 

"Romantic irony is the necessary state of mind 
which enables us to recognize the appearance of life 
and poetry as mere allegories of infinite meanings. 
. . . Universal or cosmic poetry giv^s in endless 
progression, intimations of the infinite, through 
earthly symbols." — Schlegel. 



CANTO X 

i88 

The Kaiser s repenting soul sees God. 
My soul illumed looked up and there 

I saw God on His great white throne; 
He sensed my thought, my cry, my prayer; 

His glance like granite bite of stone 
Fell by, until it rested where 

Sat Mary wise with Joseph's son. 
189 

God's Son through spiritual parenthood. 

GOD'S SON, through spirit fatherhood 

And motherhood, when lives refine 
Free from the taint of carnal brood 

The mother through the mother's line, 
In pure conception understood, 

IMMACULATE,— true love divine. 
190 

The curses of pre-natal sin. 
And softened grew his glance, as there 

Kneeling and pleading for my soul, 
My mother and her mother were: 

Pre-natal sin beyond control. 
Of rank sires born, was in their prayer, 

Their plea for crimes that curse our scroll. 



99 



100 The Cosmic Comedy 

191 

Hell's Triple Execution of the Kaiser, Tirpitz 
and Bethmann-Hollweg. 



Still — as I woke, I saw we hung, 

Three on a flaming gallows-tree; 
Tirpitz and Bethmann-Hollweg strung, 

Each one on either side of me; 
Against Hell's lurid roof we swung, 

While howling Hades danced with glee. 
192 

Damnable low German cunning , vile plotting, and 
the hour of fateful doom. 

Such damnable low cunning and 

Vile plotting now, I see, was ours: 
Efficiency, a rope of sand, 

When evil guides its ordered powers: 
Grim, sullen, gloomy, darkling grand. 

Our fateful hour of doom now lours. 

193 
Dr. Wood's tear-gas versus real lachrymose mel- 
ancholia. 



O Doctor Robert W. Wood ! 

Beryl-bromide, chloracetone. 
No lachrymose or tear-gas could 

The real tears rival that with moan 
Reveal my penitential mood: 

Our race, can they our crimes condone? 



Or the Vital Urge loi 

194 

President Wilsorij educator^ gentleman and ruler 
of wisdom. 

See how inferior now we look 

In high-bred, knightly, courteous eyes, 

Since Wilson, educator, took 

Our deeds to book in cool, firm guise; 

Our hybrid neck-scruff sternly shook, 
The gentleman, bold scholar wise. 

195 
Education the International guiding force. 

The universal guiding force 

Is education: in it lies 
The world of welfare: fountain source 

Of purpose high, when teachers wise 
Now, for its bright and onward course. 

The virgin-spirit crystallize. 
196 

The purity of mother-nature, the secret of life. 

Know ! learning must go hand in hand 

With purity, until there grows 
True character in every land, 

Which in God's wisdom only glows; 
That spirit, when all understand. 

Forth from the mother-nature flows. 

197 
True love's secret. Heaven is what we make it 
here for Eternity. 

The w^orld is of the heliosphere 

A part of Heaven, if we can learn 
That Heaven is what we make it here; 

On earth its joys we all can earn 
And share the glories waiting there. 

If love's true purpose we discern. 



102 The Cosmic Comedy 

198 
The seven virtues and the seven deadly sins. 

The seven virtues, — chastity, 

Faith, justice, temperance, — full of joy — 
Prudence, fortitude, charity. 

The seven deadly sins destroy, 
Lust, coveting, edacity, 

Pride, envy, anger, sloth, that cloy. 
199 

The moral breeding of sons and daughters. 

In moral breeding, sane and pure. 

Fond parents! rear your sons and daughters! 
Warn them in time, that safe and sure 

They may avoid the vicious cauters 
Of sex-appeal, the Devil's lure 

That sinks the soul in foul waters. 
200 

Earn while learning: learn while earning. 

Teach youth the noble worth of work. 

To earn while learning, learn while earning; 
In idle youth real dangers lurk: 

If early training be discerning, 
From duty's path, they seldom shirk, 

No honest labor ever spurning. 
201 

Der Kaiser's ingratiating repentance. 

With high ideal and purpose true. 

Thou knowest, Lord! how in pure ruth, 

Though pride of mind upon me grew, 
I sought the Grail in white-souled youth, 

And failed; but now, when woes (or foes) subdue, 
Help me, mein Gott! to spread the truth. 



Or the Vital Urge 103 

202 
Rectified Spirits and the pervert German philos- 
ophy. 

Could but the world — in neutral guise, — 

Forget its all-consuming ire ; 
Our spirits, — rectified, — might rise 

Through Hell's regenerating fire, 
A sublimated phcenix, wise. 

From our perverted "Kultur" pyre. 
203 

Manifest destiny: Repent! Reform! Repay! 

Return to God! Repent! Reform! 

Repay! though Lloyd George cries ''Too late!" 
We reap the whirlwind and the storm 

Of perfidy and kinsmen hate: 
Is destiny in brooding norm, 

To manifest relentless fate? 
204 

Personal and national reform or revolution. 

In personal reform fulfill 

Your destiny; the nation then 
Will purified arise, until 

The stain is cleansed: O God! but w^hen? 
In revolution must and will 

Our race regain goodwill from men? 
205 

The Second Commandment against phallicism 
always up-to-date. 

Sons! Thou shalt not set up nor make 

Lewd images, vile and obscene; 
Nude likenesses thou shalt not take 

To gloat o'er them in thought, unseen; 
Thus — youths the love of GO(0)D forsake, 

To revel in Hell's vice unclean. 



104 The Cosmic Comedy 

206 

SinnerSj saints, pure minds, chaste bodies,, white 
souls. 

When mind should now control life's feud, — 

White souls — clean bodies chaste — enfold, 
Experience nude from lessons crude, 

In prophets, kings and saints, behold! 
The greatest sinner, bold and lewd. 

The greatest saint became of old. 
207 

Solomon s opinion of women and how they play 
with men. 

Seven hundred wives, three hundred flames, 

Wise (?) Solomon, the vice-born, had; 
His imperception male defames. 

When every one he said "was bad," 
Not deeming that his lusts w^ere games, 

Mere play, for them, to fool and gad. 
208 

The "Pearl of his soul" ; a Hindu King's tribute 
to a woman. 

How different to that Hindu King 

Who in the Taj Mahal has raised 
An architectural pearl to bring 

His mute and reverent homage phrased. 
To marriage chaste, — the purest thing, 

That man or woman ever praised. 
209 

Kipling's less than a cigar worth woman. 

Still — while good women all admire, 

The well-bred mind refined extol! 
Blame not paid bawd, nor foul vampire, 

But flirts who flaunting virtue's role. 
Raise man-desire — with Kipling ire, — 

The chaste coquette with harlot soul. 



Or the Vital Urge 105 

210 

Bestial hoggishness, a type of manhood that most 
German educators vaunt. 
And man — lewd men — blame not the least, 

Who make the vampire and the bawd; 
Who on their vice indifferent feast, 

And hoggishness as manhood laud; 
The sensual brute and minotaur beast. 

Vile libertine, seducing fraud. 
211 

The perils of incontinence. Mind circumcision 
and continence. 
Incontinence, dire evil bold, 

To every nation brings damnation: 
Sons! circumcise the mind! withhold 

And kill the curse of fornication : 
For continence, long taught of old, 

Illumes each soul with life, salvation. 
212 

Napoleon s doom or Siberian mines for the 
Kaiser? His mild suggestion. 

Damned ! Doomed ! Doomed ! Damned ! clang Bel- 
gian bells. 

Napoleon's doom? — portentous signs 
Boom, loom and gloom from those fell bells: 

For me no ray of comfort shines; 
Around me but blank horror wells. 

Just doom for us — Siberian mines. 

213 
Goth, Vandal, Hun, and Scourge of God. 

In atavistic streams of hate 

From Hell, our breed in stages run : 

Goth! Vandal! Genseric ingrate! 
Attila, proud vainglorious one! 

That ''Scourge of God" to emulate 
I tried,^ — precox demented Hun! 



io6 The Cosmic Comedy 

214 

The squealing Hohenzollern Hog, the modern 
Minotaur. 

''O bellow Moloch! Minotaur! 

And squeal, O Hohenzollern Hog! 
You Beast of Berlin, Brute and Boar! 

Remorse shall all your efforts clog! 
Thus yell and roar the dogs of war! 

Our pride in Hell to flay and flog." 
215 

The Kaiser s bitter-brine blear-eyed remorse. 

For sons! Hell's blight blasts man and clan 

Who spurn the mother love divine 
In God's revealed, evolving plan: 

My eyes are bleared with bitter brine, 
Too short is life's redeeming span: 

Remorse ! the curse of Cain is mine. 
216 

The Red Cross and the Crown of Glory. 

The Red Cross on their brows who bear, 

White hosts of women good arise; 
What crowns of glory they will wear ! 

Suppressed the sighs, the tears in eyes, 
Christ's Mother-sorrows now they share, 

And comforted, the soldier dies. 
217 

The Mind Maternal rules the world. 

The Mind Maternal rules the world! 

The Rose of Sharon pure, divine, 
Her spirit in your souls unfurled. 

Your hearts and bodies will refine, 
And lusthood's evil hellward hurled. 

The noble man will henceforth shine. 



Or the Vital Urge 107 

218 

The arch-crirninar s final advice: — Reverence 
Motherhood! 

Dead millions haunt me! stark, alone, 

World criminal of foulest brood, 
I stand. The Hohenzollern throne 

Stinks, — stenched with lust and human blood. 
(Sternly, energetic and commanding spteaking 
aloud as he finishes writing: — ) 
Sons! Sons! for all our crimes atone, — 
Learn! Learn to reverence 

MOTHERHOOD! 



POSTSCRIPT 



lYHVHTHSTSRCDMNDKNWTM ! 

"JEHOVAH ! Thou hast searched me and knoweth 
me!" 
"LORD ! Let not my frailties be remembered !" 

"Create in me a clean heart, O God ! and renew 
a right spirit within me." 

"Cast me not away from Thy Presence; and take 
not Thy Holy Spirit from me." 



POSTSCRIPT 

For a few moments the Kaiser remained ab- 
sorbed in thought and then, looking with affection 
and reverence on the Kaiserin, he added this post- 
script : — 

219 

Love is the spirit pure, refined of GO(0)D. 

Love is not vice, lust, passion nude ; 

Love springs from heart and thought refined; 
Love spurns the vulgar, tough, and lewd; 

Love is the spirit pure of mind; 
Love rises o'er the common, crude, 

The body in the soul enshrined. 
220 

EVE the temptress and EVE the MOTHER of 
WISDOM. 

To womanhood who gave release 

From Eve the temptress, weak, obscene; 
Who bade their former sufferings cease? 

The EVE of WISDOM, calm, serene. 
The mother harbinger of peace, 

The fount of honor, chaste and clean. 
221 

Mary the Mother of Christ; The Comforter, the 
Paraclete. 

The virgin daughter taught aright, 

Of w^isdom pure, the mind concrete. 
Who through the Son has won the fight, ^ 

The serpent lust, holds in defeat; 
Effulgence of the Father's light, 

The Comforter, the Paraclete! 
Ill 



112 The Cosmic Comedy 

222 
Third Person in the Trinity! GOD Infinite! 

Shrine, temple of the Holy Ghost, 

Third Person in the Trinity! 
Long from man's view through evil lost! 

In mercy Thy divinity 
Revealed, through sorrow tempest-tost; 

GOD! in HIS vast infinity! 



Or the Vital Urge 113 



Post Post Scriptum. — Sons: — I append for 
your careful reading the following abridged discourse 
on 



"WISDOM" 

Transcribed from a farewell lecture delivered to 
an assembly of students and friends, on "Religions 
of the World," by LO-CARUS ("Citizen of the 
World"), SInlco-Japanese philosopher and educa- 
tor, international exchange professor to the leading 
universities of the world. 



SECRETA VITAE 

Ah! for the simple guileless faith 
That raves not at the bolts of fate; 

Ah ! for the patient tongue that salth 

"Though late he cometh, not too late!" 

The heart that beats in coolest rhyme 

With "God's good time," and "In God's good time." 

Long sought, long dreamed of, long withstood, 

Cajoled by youth, and foiled by sin, 
Ethereal Love! Immortal Good! 

O, thine own pathway to me w^In ; 
Nor let me faint in hopeless strife. 
Until I clasp the core of life! 

— EdmUnd Gosse. 



"In all ages entering into holy souls. She — ^Wis- 
dom — maketh them friends of God, and prophets." 
— Wisdom of Solomon, vii. 27. 



114 The Cosmic Comedy 



WISDOM 

"What is Wisdom?" said Lo-Carus. '*It must 
not be confounded with education, learning, knowl- 
edge, although these should inculcate wisdom." Wis- 
dom, as defined by the ancient classical writers, is 
"the holy spirit, the angel of good counsel, the work- 
er of all things, the pure emanation of the glory of 
the Almight}' God. The holy spirit of wisdom is 
the Mother of the wonderful counselor, the Prince 
of Peace, Father for ever." The child is inseparable 
from the mother, the mother from the father, and 
the three in one — the triunity — blends through the 
holy spirit of wisdom enshrined in motherhood, for 
the clean life of humanity. From the dim mists of 
antiquity, the voices of the old Hebrew prophets 
ring with the unmistakable world-born curse, "The 
sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto 
the third and fourth generations." Since the time 
of Mary, daughter of Anne and mother of Jesus, 
for over nineteen hundred years, the Christian doc- 
trine based on Hebrew and Greek wisdom has been 
preached, "The virginity or purity of mind of the 
mother descends upon the daughter and the chil- 
dren of all succeeding generations." Obversely, the 
impurity of the mother, generated by the father, is 
hereditary. But, very few seem to understand this, 
or seem afraid even to discuss asexually such a sim- 
ple biological principle. "Born of the Holy Spirit" 
was Mary the divine daughter of Joachim and Anne 
of Bethlehem, and "born of the Holy Spirit" was 
Jesus the pure son of the Virgin Mary of Bethlehem 
and of Joseph of Nazareth, a double purification of 
birth daily recited in the Apostles' Creed. 

This is confirmed by the Earliest "Introductory 



Or the Vital Urge 115 

Prayer" dating from 1583 A. D., known to Free- 
masonry : 

*'Ye mighte of ye Father of Heaven and ye 
wysdome of ye gloriouse Sonne through ye grace 
and ye goodness of ye holly ghoste, yt bee three 
psons & one God, be wh vs at or beginning and 
give vs grace to govrne vs here in or lyving that 
wee maye come to his blisse that nevr shall have 
endying. AMEN." 

Of this a modern paraphrase reads: 

''Work and pray until the federated w^orld ac- 
claims that in the name of the Holy Trinity, in 
God the Father, God the Mother, through God 
in Christ, God's only Son, blended in the HOLY 
SPIRIT, thus we praise 

GOD— THREE yet ONE! AMEN!" 

That great upholder of high Anglican principles, 
Lord Beaconsfield, whose father D'Israeli the Elder, 
seceded from the Hebrew Church owing to intoler- 
ant imposition, said: "In what condition do we 
find Christianity? Without clear understanding, 
half of its followers worship a Jew; the other half 
worship the Jew^ and his mother." You ask me, 
"What church do you suppose Christ would enter 
if he again came down to earth?" I answer, "I do 
not know" ; all have erred and come short of the 
glory of God" ; out of His boundless heart of char- 
ity all would appeal to Him, still I cannot help but 
feeling that His preference would be for those 
churches where the message of His supreme sacrifice 
on Calvary is daily celebrated with rites of remem- 
brance, and where womanhood is revered in His 
Mother, and w^here God the Father is reverenced 
and worshiped as of old in th^s temple where His 
Mother was educated, in all the glory and beauty 



ii6 The Cosmic Comedy 

of holiness bestowed upon the earth. "Why do 
not the Jews accept the Hebraic Christian Mes- 
siah?" "Let me answer you from their own au- 
thorities. In 1700, at the ducal court of Hanover, 
Rabbi Joseph of Stadthagen, refuting from Scripture 
all the arguments of his antagonist Eliezer Edzard, 
who had instigated the discussion, with the full ap- 
proval of the court, declined to answer under oath 
the question as to which religion was the best. He 
said: 'We condemn no creed based upon the belief 
in the Creator of heaven and earth. We believe 
what we have been taught; let the Christians ad- 
here to — and practice — what they have been 
taught.' " Nahmanides the Hebrew, disputing with 
Pablo Christiani at Barcelona, 20 July, 1263, in 
presence of James I of Aragon and his court, reply- 
ing to the question, "Has the Messiah come?" fear- 
lessly replied, "I cannot believe that the Messiah 
has come as long as the promised cessation of all 
warfare has not been realized." And now in the 
Capture of Jerusalem on Britain's Day, 191 7, we 
see the approaching federation of the world to be 
brought about by the Christ-spirit of humanity and 
internationalism proclaimed of old from Mount 
Zion and Uru-Salim the City of Peace, and where 
now the new Great World Mother, the Red Cross 
Society, is federating her work. God hasten the 
day. 

Let me repeat, "Born of the Holy Spirit of Wis- 
dom of God the Father, were Mary and Her Son 
Jesus Christ," as foretold by Moses and the proph- 
ets of old in "the woman herself will win the vic- 
tory, she will be victorious through her child," an(f 
by Isaiah, "The Lord hath created a new thing upon 
the earth. The woman shall protect the man," to 
which Church commentators add, "She shall come 
to regard herself as the fount and guardian of 



Or the Vital Urge 117 

man's honor; through the regenerated woman, 
guilty nations will return to the friendship of God" ; 
truths especially confirmed by Timothy and John of 
Patmos. Unfortunately, you will find a multitude 
of men and women of Christian sects, differing on 
minor points of doctrinal teaching mostly unimpor- 
tant, who, judging from their individual inherited 
weaknesses, regard this creed as an impossible ideal 
for human life. 

The attitude of average civilized humanity 
towards religion is that of Benjamin Franklin, who 
wrote at 84 years of age : "As to Jesus of Nazareth, 
my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think 
his system of morals and his religion, the best the 
world ever saw or is like to see; but I apprehend it 
has received various corrupting changes, and I have 
with most of the present dissenters in England, some 
doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I 
do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and 
think it needless to busy m^'self with it now, wheia 
I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth 
with less trouble." And this will be the attitude 
of average decent humankind, until theologians can 
"get together" and bring their philosophy of reli- 
gion down to the clear, comprehensible, scientific 
basis of unity which can be found in the doctrine of 
the trinity of the spirit of goodw^ill governing 
father, mother and son. 

"Christianity is a bigger thing than any Church. 
If religion in the churches does not begin very 
soon, religion without the churches will begin to 
establish the unity of God's family in the brother- 
hood [and sisterhood! — Ed.] of His children, and 
the gospel of Jesus will sanction it," thus wrote the 
Rev. Karl Reiland of New York city, 12 Dec. 
1915. "There is beauty in all religions," said Julian 
the Apostate. As Littre has written, "To discard 



1 1 8 The Cosmic Comedy 

religion as mere superstition betrays an unphilo- 
sophical mind . . . The main idea of developing 
the religions of the past, which are not false, but 
only incomplete religions, into a religion that shall 
be in accord with the science of our day, is not a 
vagary, but a great and important ideal." 

We Orientals, with the rest of humanity, strug- 
gling, groping upward to the higher light that we 
see in Christian civilization must therefore look at 
the question from all viewpoints and the conclu- 
sions which we gather and the lesson which we must 
learn to go back and teach our millions, still steeped 
with the rest of the world in the fallacies of phal- 
licism is this: — **Mind is the ultimate reality and 
virginity is to be understood as that mental state of 
moral reverence for bodily integrity w^hich exists in 
male or female, even if physical violation is perpe- 
trated against the will. Those purists who phari- 
saically plume themselves on physical virginity are 
not really virtuous when this state co-exists with 
vicious mental and secret desires of carnal lust." 

In a glorious wave of reform along these lines, 
through the Anglican work of the Holy Catholic 
Churches of Japan and China, Light has come to 
our Buddhist priesthood, and all churches must 
similarly be reformed and renew Faith in terms 
that meet the times. As the Catholic Roman and 
Greek churches celebrate Buddha in Saint Josaphat 
the convert of Barlaam, so the Buddhists see in 
Christ Jesus the ultimate incarnation of the spirit 
of Buddha, and are preaching 

''Buddha is Light, and Light is Wisdom." 

For the teaching of children a modern illustrated 
card represents the holy mother crowned as "Wis- 
dom," her heart symbolizes the Church, in her arms 
is the holy child Christ-Buddha the Eternal GOD 



Or the Vital Urge 119 

and FATHER. "Circumcise your heart," preached 
the great prophet Moses, "and not your body." 
Another card illustration is the Mother-Nurse with 
the scarlet symbol of the Red Cross not on the 
brow and mind as in the Occident, but covering the 
heart, the seat of affections. She is guiding the 
beautiful child-daughter clad in the snow-white 
garb of innocence and purity who is holding the 
hand of the protecting child-son dressed in a mili- 
tary uniform, the latter symbolizing that the mili- 
tary virtues must be cultivated in the male — not for 
offense — but ever ready for the defense of girlhood 
and womanhood, of the weak and helpless, of justice 
and righteousness. You who may be incredulous or 
curious on this subject may see these illustrations re- 
produced with typical imperceptive western com- 
ment in the Literary Digest of 22 September 191 7, 
page 33. 

As already said, the prophets of old continuously 
preached, and the preaching still continues with 
every generation, against the indiscriminate abuse 
of carnal lust, and the rank weeds of debasement, 
coarseness, evils, sin, disease, cancer, hereditary de- 
generacy, leprosy and death it entails. Plant cul- 
ture — Mendelism — is a great illustrator of this 
physical fact, as the differences between wild and 
cultivated products show; while the difference be- 
tween the undisciplined, unclean mind, and the 
clean, refined mind of humankind, is just as ap- 
parent. 

'"East and West the twain can meet" and learn 
the lesson of Humanity in the common-sense Anglo- 
American Creed of mind purity in womanhood, in- 
culcated w^ith virile reverence. Free from that 
mawkish sentimentality which has produced so much 
moral ruin in some Latin and Oriental countries, 
and by reversion, the carnal bestiality and rampant 



120 The Cosmic Comedy 

brutality of Germany, to say nothing of other north- 
ern countries, as revealed by both earnest and flip- 
pant novelists. Hear what Merrill, the spiritual 
sage of California, says: — 

"Judea, Greece, Italy, — ^What were these glori- 
ous countries and their peoples but a trinity of spir- 
itual kindergartens to prepare the way for Jesus 
and his Word. Afterwards they had to undergo 
a second incarnation in the spiritual womb of the 
mighty mother church of Rome to gestate properly 
the infantile and even the larval man of those 
times, which she received at the hands of barbarian 
Goths, Vandals and Huns that overran Italy and 
Greece so often during the early ages of Christian- 
ity (and who with atavistic recrudescence have since 
attempted the domination of the world. — Ed.) Near- 
ly all the lowest races of mankind to-day are little 
else than spiritual larvae of men who will be obliged 
to pass through the spiritual womb of the churches 
to enable them to ascend into the spiritual, rational 
and celestial planes of being. 'Rome,' said Froude, 
'is the most marvelous institution that humanity 
ever threw out of itself.' It gave law and perfect 
form to all things concerning life, and its priesthood 
became the spiritual nurse of humankind and de- 
cided for it what was proper, spiritual food for its 
spiritual infants. In doing this her priesthood and 
the later priesthoods of Protestantism conferred an 
infinite benefit on the entire human race. In the 
formulation of the religions of humankind Rome 
has done for modern civilization what the Jewish 
priesthood has done for that people that gave Christ 
to the world. The high spiritual truths taught by 
Jesus were most of them out of the spiritual reach 
of the greater portions of the mankind of his times. 
Jesus recognized this spiritual inability of the men 
of his time — even the learned men of the Jewish 



Or the Vital Urge 121 

church. 'They seeing, see not, and hearing, hear 
not, neither do they understand,' and sometimes he 
even reproved his own disciples for their lack of 
spiritual perception. Regarding the division of the 
church in later years into several leading branches, 
that also is a wise arrangement of Divine Provi- 
dence, better fitting it for its divine uses, giving the 
human intelligence greater freedom of action by bet- 
ter adapting it to the various mental and spiritual 
estates into which that intelligence naturally differ- 
entiates itself." 

Historical analysis shows that modern civilization 
is in direct relation to a blend of the Calvinistic- 
Catholic form of Christianty. Civilizations are the 
results of philosophic religious sj^stems that syn- 
chronize with earlier systems. Hebrew culture arose 
from a blend of the better elements of Assyrian- 
Egyptian religion. Greek culture was the outcome 
of faith in Egypto-Greek religion and philosophy. 
Roman culture was the outcome of faith in the 
Hellenized religion of Rome. Christian Catholic 
culture sprang from the blend of Hebraic, Greek 
Roman and Alexandrian philosophy and re- 
ligion. German **Kultur" is the outcome of 
the protesting Lutheran Reformation. Russia's con- 
dition of civilization, — does that arise from the re- 
ligion of the Greek Catholic Church, which, through 
Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, in 431 at the 
Council of Ephesus, rejected the doctrine of the 
divinity of motherhood? The Latin Catholic cul- 
ture of the Renaissance sprang from readjusted 
faith in the Catholic form of Christianity. Similarly 
the civilization of the British Empire and in a higher 
degree of America, is the outcome of faith in the 
Hebraic-Calvinistic-Catholic form of Christian phil- 
osophy and religion adjusting all creeds and races. 
But why should Hebraic-Calvinistic-Catholicism 



122 The Cosmic Comedy 

travesty its cardinal fundamentals by calling itself 
Protestant instead of Christian? True, the united 
soul of the World, Buddhist-CHRISTIAN-Mo- 
hammedan and their interrelations, cry aloud in 
"protest" against the animalism and brutality of 
German-born Protestantism that, ''true faith and 
real religion can be found alone in the Catholic 
principles of Christianity." We Orientals, how- 
ever, must attribute the former idea solely to — 
imperception — , to a lack of understanding, to the 
need of the "Light of Wisdom." As celestial light 
always comes from the East, must terrestrial light 
again come from the Farther East? In a cycle 
of Cathay (the Chinese cycle of 60 years) MEIJI 
(1868-1912) the famous "Era of Enlightened Gov- 
ernment" in Japan, has been succeeded by TAI- 
SHO— The Millennium— or "Era of Great Right- 
eousness." How soon will Occidental nations get 
in line with the Orient? Analogy should localize 
the new unified religious system in the "melting 
pot" of America, — in the New World, which Can- 
ning, the great British statesman, told the German- 
English King George III had evidently "been 
brought into existence to right the evils of the Old 
World." 

In this way is seen a solution to the problem 
whicli must occur to average well-balanced hu- 
manity, decent, clean living men and women, indif- 
ferent to unimportant theological differences but 
keen for practical unity of religious thought for the 
higher life of the world evolved from the best of the 
beliefs governing the past history of mankind. 

Matthew Arnold wrote: — "The mass of man- 
kind will never have any ardent zeal for seeing 
things as they are ; very inadequate ideas will always 
satisfy them. On these inadequate ideas reposes, and 
must repose, the general practice of the world. Who- 
ever sets himself to see things as they are will find 



Or the Vital Urge 123 

himself one of a very small group, but it is only 
by small groups resolutely doing set work that 
adequate ideas will ever get current at all." 

Somewhat pessimistically, but firm in faith of 
eventual triumph, he also wrote: — 

"Creep into thy narrow bed, 
Creep, and let no more be said! 
Vain thy onset! all stands fast. 
Thou thyself must break at last. 

Let the long contention cease! 
Geese are swans, and swans are geese, 
Let them have it how they will ! 
Thou art tired; best be still. 

They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee? 
Better men fared thus before thee; 
Fired their ringing shot and passed, 
Hotly charged — and sank at last. 

Charge once more, then, and be dumb! 
Let the victors, when they come, 
When the forts of folly fall, 
Find thy body by the wall!" 

It is not necessary to "crucify the natural in- 
stincts" as imperceptive realists and novelists sug- 
gest to acquire self-knowledge and exercise self- 
respect and self-control ; to avoid indiscriminate self- 
indulgence and abuse, the cause of the ills to which 
the flesh is heir. "See no evil; Hear no evil; Speak 
no evil" ; "Think evil and you create evil," are uni- 
versal world-old proverbs. Avoid sexual perversion 
of thought, word and deed, abnormal gratification 
of carnal desires, so that mental freedom is not 
weakened, perverted or destroyed, and delusions, in- 
ferences from delusions, abnormal emotional states, 
delirium, incoherence of ideas or dementia are not 
induced in you and your progeny. With the vicious 



124 ^^^ Cosmic Comedy 

inherited example of Lucifer Incarnate — ex-Kaiser 
Wilhelm II of Germany — before us, avoid the pre- 
eminent ego, the delusion of powerful equipment, 
mental and physical, expansiveness, elation, extrava- 
gance, garrulity, overweening pride and arrogance. 
Such a condition is hyperabulia which caused such 
mattoidism to imagine that the quadricentennial 
anniversary of Lutheranism on 31 October 191 7> 
three j^ears from the start of the Great World War, 
would have been a wonderful psychological climax 
to his great scheme of world domination. Of this 
thought, long-standing and world-wide proof is re- 
vealed in German propaganda, if needed, dating 
from 1888, the year of the ex-Kaiser's accession to 
the throne and his studied abandonment of the joint 
German and British episcopal see, hitherto main- 
tained in the interests of Protestantism at Jerusalem ; 
the subsequent caricature of himself on Mount Zion, 
masquerading as the Christian Crusader in quest of 
the Grail; and before the Capture of Jerusalem he 
arranging with the Turkish authorities to send him 
the Sangreal monstrance from the Church of the 
Holy Sepulchre as loot. Also, where stood of old 
the statue of Jove (JHWAH) on the Capitoline 
Hill, Rome, in the Palazzo Cafarrelli, the German 
embassy, an allegorical painting representing Wil- 
helm as the superman coequal with the father of gods 
and men — Shades of Jupiter! Such a condition in- 
evitably induces abulia, — the reaction to depression, 
dejection, despondency, apathy, melancholia, failure, 
acute self-analysis and self-recrimination, bitter re- 
morse, hopelessness, and— MORAL SUICIDE. In 
a collegiate thesis at the University of Vienna in 
1879, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk (191 8, first presi- 
dent of the Czecho-Slovak Republic), dealing with 
''suicide" as a pathological symptom of the condition 
of Europe, attributed its chief cause to the decline 
of religious sentiment. 



Or the Vital Urge 125 

In the course of my journey ings over the world 
in search of Truth, I find the same lesson taught 
everywhere by the ministers of God. Among the 
Kafirs of Afghanistan, when ofHciating at the rites 
of oblation, even now in fancy, I can hear through 
intervening space the priests crying aloud to the 
world "Such! such!" ("Be pure!") The history of 
the literature of the world from the earliest records 
teems with the message. Leviticus comes to mind, 
and from out of intervening ages flashes the "Pra- 
bodha-Candrodaya" — "Rise of the Moon of Wis- 
dom," the eleventh century Sanskrit drama by 
Krishna Misra, who wrote it for Kirtivarman the 
Chandella (1056-1116) ; in it the hosts of Passion 
are overthrown. Reason triumphs and by union with 
Revelation produces the Truth and annihilates the 
Reign of Terror. 

There is no need to be a "holier than thou prig," 
w^ith what Freudians (unconsciously self -accusing) 
call, "an impurity complex." As a modern Ameri- 
can poet sings, — his name escapes me for the mo- 
ment : — 

"There is one creed and only one 
That justifies GOD'S excellence; 

So cherish that His Will be done. 

The common creed of common-sense." 

Rational repression, sublimation and perfect in- 
tegrity of body are readily obtainable by personal 
culture, by mental hygiene and discipline of will. 
Enhanced by the purpose of mental and bodily chas- 
tity they are known to produce a special likeness to 
Christ and to create a crown of three "aureolae" 
which the history of theology' mentions. These 
aureolae or halos which seem to radiate from a glori- 
fied, transfigured condition of the face, head and 
hair in childhood and youth, in honored priesthood 
and sisterhood, in men and women of clean life, and 



126 The Cosmic Comedy 

in the unifying resemblance that comes to each 
other among happily married people, appear like 
earthly rewards added to the future essential hap- 
piness of eternity. They are like laurel wreaths 
crowning three conspicuous virtues and victories and 
three special points of resemblance to Jesus. As 
Michelangelo ("Michael the Angel") said, "Pur- 
ity enjoys eternal youth." Therefore I say unto 
you strive for these rewards. Gain the victory over 
the flesh in chastity; the victory over evil in the 
preaching of truth; the victory over the world — 
if need be — in martyrdom! 

In 1893 the Right Reverend Zitsuzen Asitzu of 
Japan, visiting the United States, said: "You Oc- 
cidental nations w^orking in harmony for humanity 
and universal brotherhood, have wrought out the 
material civilization of the nineteenth century. But 
who will it be that establishes the spiritual civiliza- 
tion of the twentieth century? It must be you." 
Time has revealed that it must be the principle of 
right over might which governed the Allied nations 
in their fight against the recrudescence of the Hun 
horror, intensified as it was by unmoral education. 

And now the time has come to part from our Oc- 
cidental friends. 

"This body is my house — it is not I ! 
Triumphant in this faith I live and die!" 
sings another fine American poet, F. L. Knowles 
(1869-1905), and with that glorious modern con- 
viction in the blessed assurance of immortality and 
reunion with kindred spirits in a future life, permit 
me to add, 

"Om Mani Padme Hum! 

"O the Jewel in the Lily of Purity!" 

"Ite! Missa Est!" 

Again — the Message is delivered! 

FAREWELL! 



FINALE 

THE GOLDEN ERA OF RECONSTRUC- 
TION 

The Author's Recapitulation 

THE THREE R'S OF MODERN HISTORY 

Reformation — Renaissance — Reconstruction 

The REFORMATION, no reform 

Evolved in spite of wide instruction: 

The RENAISSANCE bred but a swarm 
Of warring pride and foul destruction: 

WORLD FEDERATION rides the storm, 

CONCILIATION— RECONSTRUCTION. 

— Leonard Stuart. 

The End 



WAR AND PEACE 



1914— 1919 



"From the very beginning all the conceivable bar- 
barities implied in the Satanic principles and pur- 
poses for which the war was begun by the Un- 
speakable Beast who wrought all the wreck and 
ruin, were understood by men of clear vision." — 
—N. y. T. Feb. 9, 19 19. 

"The motif of Milton's Taradise Lost,' the 
casting out of Heaven, proud Lucifer and his devils, 
has never had an apter, more appropriate earthly 
exemplification than in the downfall and overthrow 
of the arrogant ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany 
and his brutal entourage." — S. L. C. 

"An examination of British m.ethods upon the 
intellectual life of the colonies and dependencies of 
the nation is a profitable and a fascinating study. 
In several directions, particularly in Canada, Aus- 
tralia, New Zealand and India, it has had a signifi- 
cant bearing upon world education. Wherever the 
flag of Britain has been raised, there schools have 
quickly resulted, and there order and system have 
led speedily to the generation of intellectual energy 
and to the diffusion of learning. Kipling's virile 
verse is not without sufficient reason: 

"They terribly carpet the earth with dead 

And before their cannon cool 
They walk unarmed by twos and threes 
To call the living to school." 

— E. A., New York, 1904. 
129 



130 The Cosmic Comedy 

AMERICA TO BRITAIN 
CHANT OF BROTHERHOOD 

(Revised from an impromptu contribution penciled on 
a Long Island train between 7.30 and 9 a.m. 21 Oct. 
1914, which appeared in the next morning's issue of the 
New York Tribune, in response to Harold Begbie's ap- 
peal for an alliance of the English speaking races against 
insidious German propaganda.) 

**Oft in danger, oft in woe" 
Antiphonal Tune — Racine 

Metre 4- 7s Edwards 

British brothers! loyal, true, 

English-Welsh and Irish-Scot! 
Hands around the world to you; 

On your honor stain is not. 

Celt and Angle of the race, 

Who for righteousness and peace, 
Till the reign of law they place. 

Never in their efforts cease! 

Brave colonial sons who go 

Fighting for the motherland, 
Where the Empire bugles blow, 

Grip! — a cordial grasp of hand. 

Faith defenders of the world, 

Open-hearted, brave and free, 
While against you hate is hurled, 

Stands your ancient chivalry. 

History reveals the tale, 

Though war-stained and scarred your page; 
Pledge and treaties never fail — 

Right succeeds your battle rage. 



Or the Vital Urge 131 



Onward, upward as you climb, 
Runs the humanizing plan. 

Foremost in the strife of time 
For the brotherhood of man. 



Up the civilizing scale, 

Helping on each weaker strain; 
Shall brute envy then prevail? 

Shall your efforts be in vain? 

Never! though a Prussian Hun 
Scorns the tie of motherhood. 

When an English daughter's son 
Stains the world with human blood. 

Stains his noble race with crime, 
Violates their sacred troth. 

Blots upon the scroll of time 

Neutral nations' righteous wroth. 

Envy of the devil, still 

Spurning through the human clod, 
Good, the universal will 

Of the ever-living God. 

God, the spirit pure of good. 
Who by faith in human will. 

Can alone through brotherhood 
Triumph o'er the beast of ill. 

Onward, then, to battle move; 

In the strife maintain the fight; 
With your Allied brothers prove 

Right still conquers over might. 



132 The Cosmic Comedy 

Pray! — but fight! — since fight alone 
Makes the prayer for peace avail- 
Makes all ruthless hate atone 
For the evils w^hich assail. 



But when peace shall crown the strife, 
Humanize the conquered clan, 

Teach them that the crown of life 
Is the brotherhood of man. 

'Neath the grand imperial wing, 
'Neath the British flag unfurled, 

Hear the strain their poets sing, 
"Brothers! federate the world!" 



MILITARISM: A THRENODY 

From the Globe, New York, Sept. 26, 191 4- 

["Sixty-two thousand aluminum identification 
tags bearing the names and numbers of German sol- 
diers who have been killed In France have been re- 
ceived In Brussels to be forwarded to Berlin." — 
Press Dispatch.] 

Of gallant youth, of manly prime. 

Who marched away 'neath waving flags; 

How fare they on the scroll of time? 
Some sixty thousand metal tags! 



Or the Vital Urge 133 

Flung heedless from a living flood, 
This needless sacrifice of blood 

The spirit vile of force 

Spills on its evil course, 
The beast of war, 
The Minotaur, 

Who stalks the European plains 

With legions shackled in their chains 
To lust of power, to ruthless might. 
To wrong that tramples truth and right. 

Soldiers of Christ, arise! 

And heed the sacrifice ; 
In just and righteous wrath. 
Across the vicious path, 
For manhood and for freedom — fight! 
This scourge of war and terror — smite! 
That right may triumph over might. 
Crash! Crumble in the dust! 
Mad pride and warring lust. 
Demon and man-killing brute 
Extirpate both stock and root. 
The baleful beast of war. 

The preying Minotaur; 
Till in the hosts of peace aligned 
The brotherhood of humankind 
Shall see a glorious flag unfurled — 
'The Federation of the World." 

Of noble youth, of golden prime, 

Who marched away 'neath warring flags. 

Their record on the scroll of time. 
So many thousand metal tags. 

DEUS MISEREATUR. 
The sin and the pity of it. 



134 '^he Cosmic Comedy 

THE VISION 

Death — Revelation — Faith 

Hymn and Invocation 

[Inscribed to grieving friends In memory of dear 
dead sons killed in battles on both sides.] 

From The Living Church, Milwaukee, Wis., 
6 November, 19 15. 

Hymn 
Metre. 4-ios Tune. Langran 

Death? What is death? Is death eternal sleep? 

Eternal rest for grief-torn heart and brain? 

Peace — from the earth-born throes of strife and 
pain? 
Or — Does each soul, the spirit's burden reap? 

The spirit that for good — or evil — rules 
The freedom of the will in all our deeds? 
A light to guide in all our human needs ? 

Or — Cloud the wisdom taught in godly schools? 

With faith in prayer that breathes of hopes and 
fears, 
Through starlit space, a myriad voices rise. 
While, on rapt thought, beyond the midnight 
skies. 
Harmonious pealing move the ordered spheres. 

Dark clouds of doubt, dissolving, outward roll: 
Through solar systems, circling, on faith's sight, 
Heaven opens on God's central throne of light! 

Where — Sin-absolved, Christ greets each ransomed 
soul. 



Or the Vital Urge 135 



Invocation 

When Light through Truth will reign and wars 
shall cease, 

When wrong is vanquished and subdued by 

right, 
When righteousness has conquered evil 
might, 
Join all, O God ! in Triune love and peace. 
New York, September, 191 5. 



Circling the world let the cry go forth ''The Great 
God Pan is deadr 



THE SONG OF PEACE 

From the Knickerbocker Press, Albany, N. Y. 
Metre Tune — Creation 

L.M.D. Haydn 

I 

"Peace! Peace on Earth, to men good will," 
The strain that from Judea's hill, 
Sings ever to our warring earth. 
Of love divine — the human birth: 
Still from that hill by faith profound, 
Sends forth with pealing, clarion sound, 
The message Christ to mankind brings 
Love's mandate from the God of kings. 

II 

And still that other cry is borne, 
Which on the glorious Easter morn, 
Ionian seas in darkness, stirred. 
The voice by wond'ring sailors heard! 



136 The Cosmic Comedy 

"Great Pan Is dead! his rule is o'er!* 
Rejoice! O mortals, evermore! 
Proclaim the news! uplift the strain! 
Love conquers death, and sin, and pain !" 

Ill 

Dead w^as the god of Nature rude, 

But still on earth a pagan brood, 

With arrogance and evil, plan 

''Man's inhumanity to man." 

Spirit of Christ! arise in might, 

Lest "Peace" — God's Will— fail in the fight; 

Throughout the world, O let there shine, 

HUMANITY— True Love Divine. 

Note: Plutarch, In De orac, defectu, 17, and 
other classic writers, relate that on Easter morn 
in the reign of Tiberias, Thamus, a pilot, with 
crew and passengers Including some Roman cour- 
tiers, sailed the Ionian sea near the island of Paxi 
in the Echinades. Suddenly, they heard a great cry 
from space: 

*"Tha-mouz! Tha-?nouzf pan-rna-gaz teth-nekej" 

Thamous! Thamous! the all-Great Is dead. 

This, probably a Lenten lament of the dying win- 
ter time, for the great Thamous or Adonis, raised 
by pagan worshipers assembled around some crude 
hill-top altar and, borne through the clear Egean 
air, the courtiers interpreted as a proclamation to 
be made to Tiberias as a warning against his licen- 
tious conduct. By tradition it is supposed to have 
announced the end of the old world of pagan 
cruelty and fear while heralding the beginning of 
the new world of Christian love and humanity. 

Albany, Christmas Eve, 191 8. 



Or the Vital Urge 137 



UNITY 

LIFE'S IDEAL 

The Basis of Federation 

hebrew — catholic — protestant 

"The earnest hope and expectation of the creation 
awaiteth the revealing of the sons of God." 

"A person, man or woman, who can say more 
ably, forcibly and pungently than others what those 
others are longing to have said, will sweep into unity 
an irresistible body of support." 

''What is needed is to solidify sentiment, to focus 
it, and to apply it at white heat to the particular 
barrier separating religious bodies which must be 
burnt away." 

"Those who suppose that modern facilities foi* 
the transmission and presentation of intelligence 
have lessened the value of the individual with a 
fiery message in the brain, and the heart and soul in 
the words, are deceived." 

"People think with considerable looseness on 
many points, and even when their thought is earnest 
it is seldom coordinated with the thought of others 
so as to become effective." 

"Youth especially is hard to teach and to con- 
vince. Loitering by the way, it wastes its precious 
chances, arriving at the realization of what it might 
have become only at the time when by yielding to 
ease and sloth and blandishment, it has set itself into 
ways that bar it from doing its best." 



138 The Cosmic Comedy 



"If the youth of the land, of the world, could 
grasp the great Truth, there might be in the next 
generation such forward strides as would dwarf the 
progress of the last 400 years since the slowly mov- 
ing, unaccomplished Re-Formation." 

— K. P., 9 Feb. 19 19. 

''Such inborn gentlemen is what they are, those 
splendid American soldiers. Remembering their 
mothers and sisters they respect all women; they 
help our mothers, they fight alongside of our hus- 
bands and fathers for the right, and one of the 
things that touches me most is the love of all of 
them for our little children." — Marquise de Noailles 
on American Soldiers in France, February, 1919. 

"Woman herself has won the victory! She has 
become victorious through her children." 

"And a great sign was seen in Heaven ! a woman 
arrayed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, 
and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." 



Or the Vital Urge 139 

UNITY 

Prayer and Hymn 

Inscribed to the 
Motherhood of the Great Red Cross Society 

Raise Motherhood to Heaven's bar! 

The World redeemed has found salvation! 
Go! spread the Gospel wide and far 

To every tribe and every nation! 
For now there glows in Rose and Star, 

The federated consummation! 

"And God created man in His own image, in the 
Image of God created He him, male and female." 

"Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom 
ye were sealed unto the day of Redemption." 

For neither Time nor Might dissolves 
Identity that Life evolves. Tr. 
"Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstuckelt 
Gepragte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt." 

— Goethe. 

"Be of good cheer! I have overcome the World!" 

"When the Comforter — the Paraclete — is come 
whom I will send unto you from the Father, the 
Spirit of Truth which proceedeth from the Father 
shall bear witness of me." 

See Genesis 1:26; 3:15; John, chapters 14, 15, 
16; Ephesians 4:30; i Timothy 2:15; Revelation 
12:1. 



140 The Cosmic Comedy 

PRAYER 
III 



The Mothe 



Intercessor ! 

Advocate ! Comforter ! Pleader ! 

Paraclete ! 

MARY! 
MOTHER of CHRIST! 

May the influence of Thy holy spirit 

Evermore attend us! 

Guard! strengthen! defend us! 

Virgin Daughter of Joachim and Anne! 

Divine Desire of Parenthood! 

Chaste Bride of Joseph! 

Full of the Grace of Wisdom ! 

The LORD was with Thee ! 

Temple of Purity! 

Shrine of the HOLY GHOST! 

Sanctifier and Giver of Life! 

Blessed wert Thou among women! 

And blest was the fruit of Thy pure mind! 

The gift of God ! 

The Heaven-born Child ! 

JESUS! 



Or the Vital Urge 141 



II 

The Son 

CHRIST! 

Son of Man! Son of Mary! 

Calvary's Innocent Victim! 

Sion's Supreme Sacrifice! 

Crucified that humankind might learn 

The sin and sting of death! 

Messiah ! 

Incarnation of the Word! 

Desire of Nations! 

Savior ! 

Redeemer of the World! 

Prince of Peace! 

SON of GOD! 

Coequal with 



I 

The Father 

OUR FATHER I 

Who in Heaven art of Good the Spirit pure! 

THY NAME be hallowed in each heart 

While Life and Time endure! 

THY WISDOM come! 

THY WILL be done 

On Earth as done in Heaven ! 

THY BREAD— THE WORD OF LIFE— 

Be given 

To us. Forgive 

Our sins, as those who sin 

Against us, we forgive: 

In temptation let us not, O GOD! be led astray! 

From evil, LORD ! deliver us 

NOW! 

Henceforth and alway. 



142 The Cosmic Comedy 

God 

ONE! 

Father ! Son ! 

ONE! 

HOLY GHOST! 

In MIND! 

In WILL! 

In POWER! 

JEHOVAH! 

GOD of ISRAEL! 

From Time's remotest hour! 

THY TRIUNE glory we adore! 

In UNITY for evermore, 

AMEN! 



HYMN 

"Lead, Kindly Light!" 

"Grace"— Tune— ''Austria" 

Metre 8-7S. Haydn, 



Glorious Light! to mortals given! 

Spirit pure that breathes new birth! 
Make our lives a blend with Heaven! 

Christ! come down and dwell on earth 
In the sacred troth unending, 

Coeternal, Three in One ! 
Good — the Holy Spirit — blending 

Father-Mother in the Son. 



Or the Vital Urge 143 



II 

In the Bride and Bridegroom wedded, 

See the Church of Christ appears! 
Sin and death no more are dreaded, 

Fled are pain and mortal fears! 
Faith and Hope on Love depending 

For the Life Immortal won; 
Evermore our strains ascending, 

Hymn "God's Will on earth is done!' 



Ill 

Generations swift succeeding 

In the same recurrent strain, 
To the Life Immortal leading, 

Raise the Triune hymn again! 
By the everliving merit 

Of Christ crucified, our Lord ! 
Father, Son and Holy Spirit] 

Hail the Trinity adored! 



IV 

Anthem, chant and hymn ascending, 

Rise to God's eternal throne. 
Where the saints with joy unending, 

Laud in Unity the Son, 
Through the Holy Spirit, living 

As JEHOVAH! GOD! our LORD! 
Unto Whom in glad thanksgiving. 

Let our praises be outpoured. 

Albany, N. Y., i Feb., 1919. 



TO THE READERS OF THIS BOOK 

If you believe in what is set forth in this book, 
or if you desire that the question be threshed out, 
is it not worth your while to tell others about it? 
The Cause it stands for is the best of all causes. 
You cannot help it along in any better way than 
by helping to spread far and wide what Leonard 
Stuart has said so well and forcefully as the mouth- 
piece of the mighty fallen. 
If you wish the cause of Universal MORAL 
Education well, you will talk this book over 
with your most able and sympathetic 
friends. 



THE READERS' DUTY 

Truth spreads by testimony. There is a spirit 
of hyperphysical compulsion, fate, supernal or di- 
vine guidance, — call it what you will, — w^hich all 
lofty minds recognize, to bear witness to the Truth 
— wherever found. That is how the best books 
get their circulation. A reader who has dug treas- 
ures from a book spreads the news of his discovery 
to others whom he desires to enrich. 
If this book has aroused your curiosity, 
interested you, pleased or helped you, talk 
about it to the most appreciative persons 
you know. 



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